Youth group wants sustained voter’s education

A political pressure group, #YouthDecide2019, has said the education of the electorate is critical to overcome voter apathy ahead of this year’s general elections and for democratic advancement.

Speaking on Wednesday in Abuja, the National Coordinator of the group, Mr. Chukwuma Okenwa, said normally the electorate use their wealth and services to support a candidate to office, because they know his or her capacity to deliver dividends of democracy back to them.

“Reverse is the case in Nigeria, as people collect money from candidates who have no capacity to deliver democracy dividends,” Okenwa said.

He said that robust and extensive voter education was the key to solving myriad of challenges facing the electoral system in the country, especially those that had to do with the electorate.

Tasking the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), National Orientation Agency (NOA) and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) on continuous voter education, he said voter’s education should not be done as a fire brigade approach as being currently done few weeks to the elections.

Okewa said that some politicians were currently leveraging on the ignorance and lack of political education of the electorate to build political empires for themselves and their families.

He added that the ignorance of the electorate on the power of their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) can make them vulnerable to all sorts of political manipulations.

He said, “In well-informed democracies, the electorate use their wealth and services to support a candidate to office because they know his or her capacity to deliver dividends of democracy back to them. But the reverse is the case in our clime here as people collect peanuts from candidates who have no capacity to deliver democracy dividends.

“Our citizens must know what governance means, what to expect from each of their representatives and their limitations as well as their own role to make governance and their representatives accountable. Electorate must be educated to come to the level of critical thinking.”