97-08-19 Ohio State professor selected as Bosnia electionsupervisor

OHIO STATE PROFESSOR SELECTED AS BOSNIA ELECTION SUPERVISOR

     COLUMBUS -- An Ohio State University professor has been
selected to serve as an election supervisor for the Sept. 13-14
municipal elections in Bosnia.

     Okey Onyejekwe (O-kay On-yeh-JEK-way), director of the
Center for African Studies, will be part of an international
effort to monitor the first municipal elections in Bosnia since
the Dayton Peace Accord of November 1995.

     The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE), which is organizing the elections, and the U.S. State
Department selected Onyejekwe for the position after a seven-
month screening process.  He will be in Bosnia from Sept. 4-21.

     The municipal elections originally were scheduled to
coincide with national elections last September, but have been
postponed several times to allow planners more time to organize
refugee registration and international monitoring.

     Nearly 20,000 candidates for municipal office are expected
to participate in the elections.

     Onyejekwe’s duties will include coordinating with polling
stations to ensure voting rules and regulations are followed;
providing counseling in resolving disputes or correcting errors
and other problems; and overseeing accountability and ballot
security.

     In 1994 Onyejekwe, also an associate professor of political
science and journalism, served as a United Nations election
observer for South Africa during the first multiracial elections
that ended the apartheid era in South Africa.  Onyejekwe is a
native of Nigeria who has studied and written extensively about
African politics.

     “My areas of interest are issues in democratization, human
rights and development,” he said.  “I teach and write about
Africa, but my interests are not limited to Africa because the
experiences in Bosnia are quite similar.”

     Onyejekwe also said monitoring the Bosnian municipal
elections will expose him to timely issues relating to a new
project on grassroots democratization he is overseeing in Ohio
State’s Center for African Studies.

     Onyejekwe earned his bachelor’s degree with honors in
journalism from the University of Nigeria in 1972.  He also
received three degrees from Ohio State: a master’s in journalism
in 1973, a master’s in political science in 1974 and a Ph.D. in
political science in 1978.  He joined the Ohio State faculty in
1978.

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Contact: Okey Onyejekwe, 292-8169 (office) or 457-6258 (home).


[Submitted by: Von Vargas  (vargas.12@osu.edu)
               
Tue, 19 Aug 1997 10:04:39 -0400 (EDT)]
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