The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has expressed optimism that lessons from the 2023 general elections in Nigeria are crucial to strengthening electoral management across the West African sub-region.

The Head of the ECOWAS Network of Electoral Commissions (ECONEC) post-election mission, Davidetta Browne-Lansanah, raised the hope during a follow-up and needs assessment visit to the headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Abuja.

The meeting was aimed at reviewing Nigeria’s implementation of recommendations made by the ECOWAS Election Observation Mission (EOM) following the 2023 general election.

Browne-Lansanah was accompanied by the Deputy Chairman (Corporate Services) of Ghana’s Electoral Commission, Dr. Bossman Asare; Acting Permanent Secretary of ECONEC and ECOWAS Electoral Assistance Division Head, Serigne Mamadou Ka; as well as experts from GIZ, EISA, and International IDEA.

She said:

“This joint post-2023 election follow-up and needs assessment mission to Nigeria is a peer-to-peer review of our presence here during the 2023 elections, but more importantly, the recommendations that we offered, which were outlined in a report of our visit here.

“We have come to see how best INEC has implemented those recommendations. We anticipate that during our engagement, we may be able to understand reasons for some of the issues that came out of the 2023 elections and how INEC was able to navigate in a way that it has found answers to those challenges that abounded during the 2023 elections.

“We see this mission as a lesson learned, not just for INEC Nigeria, but also for our own institutions, our own election management bodies, because as we know, problems or challenges that are faced by any election management body are often faced by election management bodies throughout our region.

“The fact that we can sit down and talk about what we went through and how it impacted our work during elections—I think we may be able to use those recommendations again to better situate our individual election management bodies when we return to our various countries.

“So let me say on behalf of the team that we are happy to be here and we are happy for your warm welcome all the time. But let me go further to say that Liberia, the National Elections Commission, appreciates you in particular for your stance in ensuring that we do a good job as we have done here in Nigeria.”