2011 Nigeria National Elections
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involved 56 expatriate elections experts, assisted by dozens of Nigerian experts, including IRI's local
staff (some local staff traveled to their states of origin in order to vote), security and logistics
contractors.
Once deployed, the short-term observerss met with election stakeholders in their respective
deployment location in preparation for Election Day. These included meetings at the state and local
level with INEC officials, political party representatives, candidates, civil society and the media. As
described earlier , IRI's long-term team observed the April 16 presidential election separately from
the short-term observation mission; the findings and observations of the long-term teams, although
collected independently, helped to inform the preliminary assessment of the April 16 presidential
election. Part of this assistance included briefing the short-term teams upon arrival in their assigned
states. In total, IRI observers conducted more than 250 collective and individual meetings with
Nigerian political party representatives, candidates, election and local government administrators,
domestic nongovernmental organizationss, activists, security officers, news correspondents and
voters throughout Nigeria.
Each short-term team was comprised of no more than two delegates (mostly one delegate) and at
least one IRI staff member. In total, IRI's 44 short-term observers covered 12 states, with coverage
of at least one state in each of Nigeria's six geopolitical zones, and a mix of both urban and rural
locations (roughly 60 percent urban, 40 percent rural). IRI deployed multiple teams in the more
densely populated states, such as Lagos. The table below shows the location and number of teams
(both long-term and short-term) deployed in each of the 12 states covered:
State
# of
teams
Akwa Ibom
1
Adamawa
1
Cross Rivers
2
Ebonyi
1
Enugu
2
Kano
3
Kaduna
3
Kogi
1
Lagos
4
Nasarawa
1
Ogun
1
Federal Capitol
Territory (FCT)
3
