By Rejoice Kungwa
The Initiative for Human and Community Development (ICHD), a non-profit organisation has organised a second town hall meeting to sensitise the youth of Taraba State on the need to stay away from electoral violence.
The organisation held her second town hall meeting on 22 February at Shimo 92.9 FM. The essence of the meeting is to enlighten the youth on the significance of staying away from violence before, during, and after the election.
Mr Malik Ibrahim, the Project Manager of ICHD noted that ICHD of Taraba State is among the six states in the North Central that were funded to train youth against electoral violence. The ICHD was funded by Kimpact Development Initiative, the International Republican Institute and National Endowment for Democracy to ensure free and fair elections. He said they recruited two persons in each local government in Taraba state that would monitor the electoral process.
Superintendent Illiya Samaila, the Public Relations Officer of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, Taraba State command who is also a guest speaker in the programme assured the citizens of their safety and encouraged them to come out and vote on the day of the election.
"At the state level of the inter-consultative committee, deployments have been made and security officers are to ensure that no voter would be intimidated and subjected to any form of violence.
“The question of what difference security officers would make this time around is not the problem but the fact is that it is difficult to change something that had existed over a very long period. However, achieving a violent free election is a gradual process and it takes time to do that. The existence of a Rapid Response Squad and Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) of the Nigeria Police has been put in place to deal with threats,” he said.
He added a few reasons why electoral violence occurs, stating that the desperation of the politicians to emerge the winner of the election pushed some of them to recruit thugs to intimidate people on the day of election. He described this act as one of the root causes of electoral violence. He, however, urged the politicians to allow the mandate of the people to be heard through their ballots and not incite people against others.
The superintendent of Police, Usman Abdullahi, who is the state police Public Relations Officer said they were a hundred per cent securities that are ready to see that they achieve a free, fair and credible election in 2023.
"We have expanded more than we used to be. The Commissioner of Police, CP Yusuf A. Suleiman on the resumption of duty had his mantra, where he expanded the electromagnetic connectivity linking us with other sister security agencies collaborating and coming together to deliver a free and fair election devoid of violence,” he noted.
Mr Marvin Mathias Bandawa, a representative of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and guest speaker also educated the citizens on the steps involved in voting for their candidates.
He educated them on the need to check their names at their polling units as there is an exercise of the migration of voters carried out by INEC where voting points used in 2019 have been converted to complete polling units and there's a need for the registration of new voters or transfer. He added that the reason for the exercise is the decongestion of overpopulated polling units.
Dan Mazani Kulibali, a caller on the radio asked a question on the possibility of calling the Rapid Response Squad in areas with poor networks and pleaded with INEC officials to put old people, pregnant women, and people with disabilities into consideration in the course of the elections.
In response to the caller’s question, the INEC representative said the INEC ad-hoc staff have been trained to give priority to pregnant women, physically challenged, and old people, and allow them to vote before any other person through a process called the ‘priority voting’.
“In the aspect of security he mentioned, a mobile monitoring team whose duty is to reach out to areas without a network are always patrolling around such areas just in case any issue arises,” he responded.
The security, however, encouraged the citizens to vote for their preferred candidate without fear of any violence.
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