From: Samuel Luka
Mr. Ezenwa Nwagwu, the Executive Director of Peering Advocacy and Advancement Centre In Africa (PAACA) has observed that the law alone cannot not address the daunting task challenges of electoral irregularities in Nigeria.
The Executive Director of the NGO who made this known during a training session organized by the PAACA in partnership with MacArthur Foundation for media practitioners in Bauchi, opined that attitudinal change is also required to address the problem.
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.
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.
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 for the benefit of the citizens.
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.
He also noted that citizens' ignorance of the Electoral Act is posing a big challenge to the Electoral process in Nigeria.
"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 added that, 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.
"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".
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.
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