By Mohammed Abubakar Dutse
Stakeholders in the electoral process have identified poor knowledge of electoral laws, complacency of political parties to their responsibilities as well as biased coverage of electoral activities amongst others as some of the factors inhibiting the attainment of free, fair and credible elections in Nigeria.
They made the observation during a one-day citizens’ town hall meeting on electoral reform at Tahir Guest Palace, Hotel in Dutse, the Jigawa state capital, organized by The Peering Advocacy and Advancement Centre in Africa PAACA), a Non-Governmental Organization, with support from MacArthur Foundation.
The forum provided the platform for the stakeholders to rub minds on the problems associated with the Nigeria’s electoral process, with special focus on the recently conducted general election in Nigeria.
The forum attracted participation from diverse interest groups, including political parties, security agencies, civil society groups, the Independent National Electoral Commission,(INEC), people living with disability, (PWDs) and the media, amongst others.
The PAACA Executive Director, Mr. Ezenwa Nwagwu, in his welcome remark explained that the objective of the meeting was to interact with stakeholders, aggregate their views and encourage them by keeping them fully abreast of the electoral law so that everyone could contribute his/her quota towards electoral reform.
According to Nwagwu: “The objective of the meeting is to foster inclusive dialogue among citizens from varied backgrounds concerning electoral reform and constitutional amendment towards enhancing public understanding and awareness regarding electoral reform and to compile and present citizen-drived recommendations to the national Assembly and INEC for consideration”.
According to him while democracy has come to stay in Nigeria, it was lamentable that inadequate knowledge of the electoral law by the general public is causing so many set backs before, during and after elections. So, it is therefore, appropriate for the citizens to be fully abreast of what the law says about their electoral process before embarking on the journey.
Nwagwu explained that the engagement was coming as a time the National Assembly had set in motion the process of the constitutional amendment and the drums of 2027 general elections are beginning to sound.
“Besides, experience has shown that political parties have largely abandoned their roles assigned to them by the electoral law, especially as regards the management of their political activities and processes, before, during and after the elections and have instead in most cases resorted to blame the electoral umpire the INEC for their own failure.”
Making allusion to the needless brouhaha generated by the glitches in the INEC portal, during the last presidential elections, Nwagwu believed that if the political parties were actively alive to their responsibilities, they ought to have questioned the credibility of the collated results by their agents from the various electoral wards, rather than dissipating energy on the non-transmission of the results into INEC portal.
“Unfortunately, some sections of the media have allowed themselves to be used by the politicians to project this false scenario
Some of the recommendations made by participants included the strengthening internal democracy, among political parties more voter education and faster and swift punishment for electoral offenders to serve as deterrent to others.
The participants also recommended extension of electoral petition deadline from 21 days to give enough time for filing comprehensive petitions as well as improving the election process for disadvantaged groups such as women, youths and PWDs to participate in the electoral process.
Nwagwu said Jigawa is the 5th state where such citizens sensitization meeting has held and it’s going to be continuous to cover all states of the federation and commended the participants for their participation in the engagements and recommendations and assured that PAACA as voice of the voiceless would do all their best to forward the recommendation to the relevant stakeholders for consideration.
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