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From Aloysius Attah, Onitsha
ElectHer, one of the EU-funded election observatory groups involved in the Anambra governorship election, has described Anambra as one state in Nigeria with a legacy of pioneering women leadership in governance.
Speaking during a stakeholder’s briefing and unveiling of the Gender Situation Room in Awka yesterday, Ibijioke Faborode, CEO ElectHer said despite a national decline in women’s representation in Nigeria, Anambra stands as a beacon of progress in that direction, as the only state in Nigeria to have produced a female governor, the highest number of female senators (4 tied with Lagos) and six female federal ministers across administrations.
She stated that the 2025 governorship election also reflects an all-time high of 37.5% per cent women as deputy governorship candidates. While giving a rundown of the activities in the Anambra election, Faborode disclosed that the Gender Situation Room, hosted under Component 5A of the Eu–SDGN programme is a collaborative initiative of ElectHer and the Nigerian Women Trust Fund (NWTF).
She disclosed that the Gender Situation was deploying 226 field observers across all 21 LGAs in Anambra State and would host a joint Data Centre to ensure coordinated observation, analysis, and rapid reporting throughout the election period. Vanessa Udegebe Gregory, Programme Lead, NWTF, said the Nigerian Women Trust Fund (NWTF) was also deploying its flagship Gender and Election Watch (GEW) initiative with 100 trained observers across all 21 local government areas of the state. She said the observers were selected using a random sampling method to ensure representative coverage of communities while the observers shall report through the Gender and Election Watch App enabling real-time submission, verification and analysis of field data.
Zigwai, Tagwai, Programme Lead, Democracy and Governance, ElectHer in her presentation disclosed that under the ElectHer Election Hub, ElectHer would deploy a total of 126 observers -120 field observers covering all the 21 LGAs and 6 collation observers across 5LGA collation centres and the State Collation Centre. Presenting the pre-assessment findings, ElectHer CEO Faborode said the organisation in a final pre-assessment report covering the period of 3 September to 25 October 2025, conducted through a rapid perception poll of 603 women across all the 21 LGAs in Anambra showed that 92.8% of respondents confirmed ownership of their permanent voter cards aligning closely with INEC’s 98% collection data.
