Former Nigeria president, Goodluck Jonathan, has noted that improving the standard of elections in Africa can encourage people to use their votes to remove bad leaders.
Jonathan stated this while speaking to the SABC News at the Independent Electoral Commission’s Results Operation Centre in Pretoria.
The former president is leading an observer mission of the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA) to monitor the South Africa’s general election scheduled 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,” Jonathan said.
