The representatives of the European
Union Election Observation Mission Nigeria 2019 visited APCON House recently in
Abuja, the team was headed by Inta LASE,
media Analyst. The team analyses political, electoral, legal regulatory and
other issues related to the electoral process.
The members of the team, who are
currently in Nigeria, has the
mandate to assess election based on
International standards. They were received
by the Ag. Registrar of the Advertising Practitioner’s Council of Nigeria,
APCON, Mrs.Ijedi Iyoha, rpa.
Responding to the questions on
compliance/ regulatory issues on
Campaign activities of the political parties, Mrs. Iyoha informed the
team that APCON recorded about 65% compliance from the political parties who
submitted their advertising campaigns
for vetting and approval which is an improvement from the 2015 general
election. However, the support groups for the political parties have not
complied with the extant laws. On violations, APCON has captured and recorded
several violations.
On the issues of sensitization of our
mandate, she continued that APCON had several Public fora and collaborations
with the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) on
political communication, press mentions/ releases, radio and television appearances, meetings with
political parties at INEC office, to educate the political parties, party
agents, media practitioners, support groups etc, on the need for the
advertising campaigns to be issue based and free from hate speech.
The European Union Election Observation
Mission is here in Nigeria, through the invitation of the Independent Electoral
Commission (INEC) to observe the general
Election, and had been doing this since 1999.
Concerning the challenges faced by
APCON in discharging its regulatory mandate, Mrs Iyoha mentioned :
1. The resentment of the code
by some political parties
2. The propagation of hate
speech through the social media
3. Non compliance by the
media organisations
4. Inadequate funding
5. Inability of APCON to cover the country effectively.
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