 Centre for Democracy and Development, CDD, has chaired the Independent National Electoral Commission and critical stakeholders, including security agencies, political parties, the media and civil society organizations to reply lessons learned from the 2023 general election and the conduct of the elections in Imo, Kogi and Bayosa. The CDD Election Analysis Centre made these calls through a member of the Centre, Fung Kebarua, at its pre-election briefing in Abuja on Friday. It is important for the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and other critical stakeholders including security agencies, political parties, the media and civil society organizations to apply lessons learned from the general elections in the conduct of the off-circle elections. While the threats of violence, misinformation and inducements are factors that might play a role in the outcome of the elections, these issues can be addressed if there are sufficient efforts to mitigate them. Members at the Independent National Electoral Commission to be impartial in security agencies to show professionalism and unbiased in discharging their duties during the exercise. We want to clearly, you know, call on the security agencies not to support any political party or any candidate because part of the reason why violence happens is when, you know, the voters, they see clearly some PAP officials are coming and they get all the necessary protection then it, you know, annoys some people even though it's not a justification for them to do anything that will undermine the credibility of the peaceful election there. But we really want to call on all the politicians, all the political parties and the security agencies not to do anything capable of raising any tension in these three states. Already we have at hand, you know, a tension in these three states and we would like the security agencies to be professional to completely be unbiased so that there will be some level of sanity, you know, for this election to happen. We note the increasing synergy between the security agencies and INEG and the expectation is that that will address some of the concerns and fear and across the board and all the critical stakeholders, the politicians and other non-state actors will confirm. The security agencies are rising up to the calendars in terms of, and of course, we notice in the past four hours there have been some discussion, including apologies here and there from those concerns. So we do not expect that that will snowboard into the process. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.