TMG To Hold Leaders Accountable To Campaign Promises

The Transition Monitoring  Group (TMG) has taken immediate  steps to hold   elected leaders especially  the four leading Presidential  candidates in the  just concluded 2023 election accountable to their campaign promises during the electioneering.

Chairman of the TMG, Auwal Ibrahim  Musa Rafsanjani told a news conference  in Abuja that it has become incumbent on the civil society and citizens to remind the leaders of their promises  to forestall a situation where they may deny and in some cases turn blind eyes to their promises.

Rafsanjani said this at the occasion of the Launch of a Compendium of Campaign Promises by leading presidential candidates in the just concluded 2023, which he noted underscores the core vision of the current Board of TMG.

“As the foremost election observation and monitoring group in Nigeria, TMG cannot afford to fold its arm till every election cycle to be active in

Nigeria quest for consolidated democracy. Hence the vision is to see TMG move beyond election observation to governance monitoring. As we all know, citizens’ participation is at the heart of governance monitoring,” he said.

He added that citizens can only participate in governance to the extent of information at their disposal, stressing  that  they must take active steps in ensuring that they are adequately informed, to enable them to use the information to hold government to account.

He said further, “It is in realizing the new vision and contributing its quota to making information available to citizens as a tool to hold government to account that TMG under the auspices of the SCALE project with support from the American people began documentation of the campaign promises of leading presidential aspirants as soon as the campaign period began.”

He added the “objective of the exercise is quite simple; often times, we have seen politicians outrightly deny promises they made after they have been elected to office, or just simply turn a blind

eye to promises made especially when no one seems to hold them to account on those promises.

“Also, we have seen citizens quickly forget about the promises made if they are not documented. Hence, TMG has documented promises from the 2023 election with the hope of presenting a tool that can be used to remind elected leaders and hold them to account on

their own words.”

Rafsanjani  said further  that the areas of focus  include the economy, health, education, security, anti-corruption and others. He also hopes to subsequently expand the scope of this exercise to the subnational level where governance accountability and citizens participation is at a critical low.

“We adopted a straightforward methodology to documenting these promises, and this include desk reviews, constant monitoring of appearances of the candidates in different

media and forum.

“More importantly we combed through the manifestos of the candidates

which as far as we are concerned remain the most binding documents to the aspirants.

“Though a president has emerged from the electioneering process and other candidates are in court contesting the outcome of the election, however it plays out, this publication will serve as critical tool to holding the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to account

on his own promises,” he said.

He commended  the SCALE Project of the Palladium Group and the

United State Agency for International Development (USAID) for finding this effort worthy of their support and for supporting the process leading up to the documentation of this compendium.