By Shola Abayomi
Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, former president of Nigeria, has said that improved elections in Africa will soon empower the people to use their votes to remove bad leaders.
Speaking to a South African media outlet, SABC News, at the Independent Electoral Commission’s Results Operation Centre in Pretoria, Jonathan said the electoral umpire plays a significant role in ensuring safe and successful elections.
Jonathan is head of an observer mission of the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA) deployed to South Africa to monitor the country’s general election slated for May 8.
“This year’s election appears to be one of the strongly contested elections so far in the history of SA democracy and everybody is interested in the outcome. We have observed some of the rallies and we are quite comfortable how things are going
“The key thing about elections is the body managing the election and of course the security, the police. If the stakeholders, the political parties have confidence in these two organisations, then of course we are quite hopeful.
“I have gone to many African nations as leader of different observation missions including the Commonwealth, African Union, National Democratic Institute, and of course EISA and I am quite impressed and hopeful that the standard of managing of our elections will continue to improve.
“I believe that if we improve our standard of elections, we will get to that point where people, using their vote, can remove a leader they feel is not leading them well”, the former president said.
Jonathan, who expressed the fate of his team in the electoral process in South Africa, said governance has nothing to do with age, adding that young people have a role to play in driving new trends in information technology and knowledge-based economy.