Towncriernews
As part of efforts to address voters’ apathy in the September 21, 2024 governorship election in Edo State, stakeholders in the electoral processes have called on the political class to mobilize their supporters and party faithful to participate actively in the voting exercise.
The call was made at a one-day Policy Dialogue on Edo State Governorship Election 2024 organised by the Electoral Institute, in Benin City, Edo on Wednesday with the theme: “Enhancing Voter Participation and Inclusivity in The Edo State Governorship election”.
In their various remarks, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Resident Electoral Commissioner in Edo State, Dr Anugbum Onuoha; the Chairman , Board of Electoral Institute, Abuja, Prof. Abdullahi Abdu Zuru; and a Political Science lecturer, University of Ilorin, Prof. Hassan Saliu, were of the opinion that political parties and leaders have a critical role to play to address voters’ apathy in any election in the country.
In his remarks, Prof Abdullahi Abdu Zuru, noted that the rate of turnout of voters in some of the recent elections conducted in the country were not encouraging to INEC in spite of all the innovations and efforts put in place to take the election to the doorsteps of prospective voters.
Zuru noted that the commission was taking giant strides to ensure that every eligible voters in Nigeria exercise his franchise
“In spite of all these efforts (innovations) to ensure that elections elections are made easy for everybody, yet the level of voter participation, and apathy is indeed worrisome to us.
“We expect that with such improvement in the conduct of elections, more and more people will be appearing in the elections so that we will have high participation of electorate in the election”, he said.
He assured that INEC would continue to play key roles in enhancing voters participation and inclusivity among the electorate through voters education and advocacy mechanisms.
He however, appealed to all stakeholders particularly political actors to play the game by the rules and regulations.
“We on our part as an electoral umpire assured the good people of Edo State in general and political actors in particulars that we shall abide by the provisions of the electoral legal frameworks namely the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the electoral act 2022, INEC regulations and guidelines as well as the manual for election officials as approved by the commission
“Only eligible voters of Edo State will decide the next governor of the state. Your votes will definitely count”, he assured.
Earlier, Dr Anugbum Onuoha, the Edo REC, said the dialogue was geared towards addressing voters’ apathy in the forthcoming governorship election in the state as well as why people are not coming out to vote during elections.
Onuoha, who assured that the commission was not only ready to conduct credible, free and fair elections, noted that they cannot fail the people of Edo State, adding that their votes would count.
He said that the commission had carried out several advocacy, training programmes and among others to ensure that the conduct of the election was generally accepted by all stakeholders
On his part, Prof Hassan Saliu, the guest lecturer in his lead paper, “Enhancing Voter Participation and Inclusivity”, said the essence of policy dialogue was to enlighten and sensitise the electorate and residents of Edo State to come out to cast their vote for candidate for any political party of their choice during the election.
Saliu, who is also the President, Nigeria Political Science Association (NPSA), suggested that globally any election that does not enjoy a high level of participation would not be regarded as being credible and very successful.
According to him, the essence of this policy dialogue is to sensitise stakeholders in order to mobilize the electorate to actively participate in the election.
“You see credibility leads to legitimacy. If people don’t feel able to participate in an election whatever the outcome it will suffer from legitimacy crisis.
“So, in order for the forthcoming governorship election in Edo State not to have any form of question mark hanging around it, we need to mobilize everybody around to come out and vote because, coming out to vote by the people will go along way of making the election’s to be credible”, he stated.