by Véronique Zidi

02 March 1999

Bonn, Germany: The backdrop to the recent elections in Nigeria is well-known. Successive military governments for most of the years since Independence. Presidential elections in 1993 which raised hopes for a return to democracy, only for the results to be annulled by General Abacha. Credibility restored when, in 1998, General Abubakar assumed power upon General Abacha's death and committed himself to democratic rule. Review by the European Union, in the light of those encouraging developments, easing sanctions with effect from November 1st last. And in December and January, a first round of municipal and State Assembly elections.

With National Assembly and Presidential Elections to be held on 20 and 27 February this year, the EU decided to give further support to the electoral process in the country. It would assist the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) with international monitors. The EU requested UNV to recruit and field 100 Electoral Monitors on its behalf. UNV had already provided support to the UN Electoral Assistance Secretariat by assigning 24 Electoral Officers to Nigeria in early December last, 12 of them National UNVs. This first group had set up regional offices around this vast country, liaised with INEC and local authorities and begun preparations for the monitoring groups to come.

UNEAS added an operational centre in Lagos, late in January. The Lagos team was mixed, consisting of UNEAS staff members and UNV Specialists Margaux Van de Fliert (Netherlands) and Scipion du Chatenet (France) assigned to logistical support of the EU monitors, and Metty Purnama (Indonesia) and Nizam Ahmed (Australia) to that for monitors coming from Canada, Norway and Japan. UNV HQ decided to send me to Lagos to facilitate and co-ordinate this preparatory work in consultation with all concerned.

The time -frame was pretty short: 10 to 15 days to prepare for the arrival of 100 monitors. And the work to be done? Plan the monitors' reception at the airport; identify a safe and spacious hotel; rent the necessary vehicles; set up a reliable communications system with the regional offices; make plane reservations; prepare the electoral briefing and manuals; work out the actual deployment; liaise with embassies, etc. Two weeks and counting...

Margaux and Metty , the two Logistics Officers in charge of accommodation, had to give up their first attempt to find a hotel: a reasonably priced one turned out to be "funky", with heart-shaped beds in some rooms, just buckets of water in the bathrooms and no reliable security … We were back to Square One just six days from the arrival of the first group … After long negotiations and arguments about the visibility of 100 monitors coming to Nigeria to witness the transition to democracy, a block booking of 100 rooms was made with no advance payment.

That issue sorted out, next there was the transport. Scipion and Nizam, the two Transport Officers, made all sorts of contacts to get the best car rental company in Lagos. After having painfully negotiated an agreement to rent 50 vehicles, they received a phone call on 10th February at night, calling off the deal: "The money wasn't good enough". Back to phone calls throughout the country. They finally managed to get a safer contractor. We really had the impression sometimes that the gods were against us.

However, after days of work around the clock and marathon meetings to co-ordinate the whole mission, we were more or less ready for "D-day", 12th February. The logistical support was in place: Scipion and Nizam on stand-by with the buses in the airport diplomatic carpark, the UNDP Protocol Officer, the Security Officer and myself at the gate to the tarmac, with our little cardboard lists to ensure that we wouldn't lose a single monitor. We channelled everybody from the plane to an immigration counter opened specially for the monitors. All passports and visa forms were collected by the Protocol Officer and the monitors went straight to baggage retrieval without queueing. The same for the customs clearance, with not a single bag checked. It took us two hours. After a struggle to fill the buses with monitors and luggage, we started the convoy, led by the Security Officer in a car equipped with a siren and lights. VIP treatment!

Receiving them at the hotel was handled by Margaux and Metty. Despite check-in forms pre-filled for each monitor and refreshments kindly offered by the hotel, check-in took some time and the monitors, by this stage, were pretty exhausted. The hotel was rather expensive and some of them complained about the rates, despite the explanation given in a welcome note distributed to all justifying the reasons for the choice. The next day, that was no more than a memory and everybody was relaxed and in a good mood. Obviously, we'd made a big effort on the 12th, so that it was much easier to prepare for the arrival of the second group, of 25, who arrived the next day.

The briefing sessions were organised over two days and covered both political and electoral issues and administrative matters. Paying each monitor's entitlement in cash was a bit challenging: carrying the equivalent of a quarter of a million US dollars in cash and distributing it was quite an experience ! Then came the sacred revelation of the deployment plan, with its traditional beehive atmosphere - all the monitors trying to identify their new partners and frantically looking on the map of Nigeria to locate their duty stations!

By the evening, before their deployment throughout Nigeria by air and road, they were able to relax at the welcome party hosted by the German Embassy. Their "real" work then started … and we the Lagos team could finally take a well- deserved rest.