NAN-H-40
Education
By Douglas Okoro
Izzi (Ebonyi) Feb 8, 2018 (NAN) A former Commissioner for Works and Transportation in Ebonyi, Chief Chukwuma Nwandugo has called for sustained voter education to enlighten and mobilise eligible voters to participate in electoral activities.
Nwandugo made the call while briefing newsmen on Thursday in Iboko, Izzi Local Government Area of Ebonyi, after a voter sensitisation rally organised by the All Progressives Congress (APC).
According to him, sustained voter education in a democracy is needed to galvanise the people for mass participation in the electoral process and assist eligible voters make informed choices.
Nwandugo, an APC governorship aspirant in the forthcoming 2019 general election, noted that the beauty and attraction of any democracy was the provision of opportunity for every eligible person to participate in determining who would lead.
He said that participatory democracy would be meaningless and elusive if the people were not educated and sensitised on their rights, obligations and privileges and how they could appropriate these fundamental provisions to make informed decisions.
“Voter education is needed to enhance the knowledge and capacity of the electorate to make informed decisions in choosing their elected representatives, thereby enhancing good governance.
“The rally just ended is designed to sensitise, educate, enlighten and mobilise our people at the grassroots to go out and register, and collect their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).
“With this exercise, many of them have been educated and sensitised on the importance of the PVCs and they have also understood how powerful the PVCs are in choosing their leaders during elections.
“We the stakeholders will ensure that the sensitisation is further decentralised by stepping it further to the communities, villages, wards and hamlets.
“We have commenced a local sensitisation and have created committees that will enable us decentralise the activities into communities, villages and to the remotest part of the grassroots in the local government to see that this message is being carried.
“The idea is that NASS Committees have the mandate to go into communities, villages, wards to educate the electorate that the only power and authority they have to make any change in any government, is their voter cards.
“We want our people to effectively participate in the crucial 2019 general elections and we will do this by effectively mobilising them to participate in the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR),’’ Nwandugo said.
He commended the State Working Committee (SWC) of the party, led by the state chairman, Mr Eze Nwachukwu for embarking on the CVR sensitisation campaign.
Nwandugo said that stakeholders in the local governments were interfacing with officials of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to improve on the registration process.
He said that the ward to ward rotation of the registration machines adopted recently by INEC for registration had led to many eligible voters being captured and urged the commission to sustain the tempo. (NAN)
ODO/OIF/EEE
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Edited by Ifeyinwa Okonkwo/Ese E. Ekama