Ignorance a major challenge to Nigeria’s electoral process – PAACA Director

By Samuel Luka,
Bauchi

The Executive Director, Peering Advocacy and Advancement Centre In Africa (PAACA), Mr. Ezenwa Nwagwu has noted that citizens’ ignorance of the Electoral Act is posing a big challenge to the Electoral process in Nigeria.

Mr. Nwagwu who made this known at a one-day training session organized for media practitioners in Bauchi on Tuesday, pointed out that he was speaking from the point of experience he gathered after visiting about sixteen states this year.

“I am in a better position to tell you that interacting at town halls and in this kind of engagement, I am very clear that ignorance is a big challenge to our electoral process and we need to confront it”, he declared.

The Executive Director said, even within the political parties, most of the candidates who are running for elective positions do not even know what the law says about election in which they are participants.

Mr Nwagwu noted that PAACA is working with support from MacArthur foundation to explain the legal framework, the 2022 Electoral Act within which Nigerian elections are conducted.

According to him, PAACA, having realized that even the most enlightened segment of the society do not have understanding of the electoral Act, it decided to partner with the media practitioners across the six geopolitical zones in order to brainstorm on how to carry out voter education to the benefit of the citizens.

While stating that PAACA has been carrying out such training across Six geopolitical zones of the country, Mr. Nwagwu observed that the way forward to get the citizens know the Electoral Act is for the stakeholders to sustain voters education.

He expressed confidence that with the knowledge acquired from the training, more people in Bauchi state and the Northeast would have the opportunity to be happy about the legal framework within which elections are conducted in the country.

Mr Nwagwu called for a shift in the citizens’ mindset, regretting that most of the problems associated with elections are not legal but attitudinal.

“The politicians who cart away or stuffed ballot box or incite violence, the law will not cure it, what will cure it will be for people to accept that we want free, fair, credible and acceptable election”, he added.

“As you have seen, we have unpacked the electoral Act, we have unpacked the Electoral process in a way that is understandable by almost everyone who is interested in that and the only window to do that is through the media”, the Director said.

According to him, “the relationship been established between PAACA and the media is aimed at ensuring that we get out to more people towards 2027, that to speak about election, you must first and foremost understand the law”.

Our Correspondent reports that not fewer than 30 journalists participated in the training with a panel discussion where the Panelists shared their experiences and how to address future challenges while reporting election process.