Former President Goodluck Jonathan has led the West African Elders Forum (WAEF) to Senegal on a mediation mission ahead of the country’s presidential election on Saturday.
This was disclosed in a statement signed in Yenagoa on Thursday by the Goodluck Jonathan Foundation communications officer, Wealth Ominabo.
According to the statement, Mr Jonathan, also the chairperson of WAEF, and other forum members left Abuja on Thursday for Dakar, where they will remain until next Wednesday.
The statement named Mohamed Ibn Chambas, former special representative of the secretary-general and head of the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel, as a team member.
The team will meet with key stakeholders, including outgoing President Macky Sall, opposition leaders, civil societies, security authorities, and the country’s electoral commission.
The statement noted that the executive director of the Goodluck Jonathan Foundation and head of the WAEF secretariat, Ann Iyonu, said the foundation was a “forum primed for mediation”.
According to Ms Iyonu, the forum expects to perform advisory and conflict resolution roles to reduce election-related conflicts to the barest minimum in the West Africa sub-region.
She described the forum as a composition of former presidents and statesmen who had volunteered to deploy their enormous leadership experience and wisdom toward promoting peace and progress in the sub-region.
In the statement, Ms Iyonu said that while in Dakar, the forum would observe electoral processes and continue to engage political leaders and other stakeholders until the election was peaceful and successfully concluded.
“WAEF, going by this mandate, had played similar roles during elections in The Gambia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Liberia,” says Ms Iyonu.
