THE Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) have embarked on a nationwide sensitization of electorates ahead of the 2019 general election, to educate voters on proper voting.
The sensitisation is targeted on educating the voters on the dangers of selling their votes and the advantages of voting according to their consciences and abstaining from violence following the outcome of the election.
The Coordinator of the Abuja Hub, Nnaemeka Ezeani, during their sensitisation exercise at Dutse, Bwari Area Council Abuja, said the aim of the exercise was to educate stakeholders on their civic responsibilities.
“We are carrying out a campaign that we tagged NaijaVote campaign, we are trying to educate the electorate and every other stakeholder in this election on their civic responsibility, so we are engaging them.
“What we are trying to do now is to get across to each and every one of them, we have organized conferences with the political parties, debates with our partners, we have also conducted outreaches, we visited the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps, the idea is that we are trying to reach out to different people that nobody is going to think about, today we said we will carry our campaign to Dutse.
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“Most people don’t think about these people, most people will not come here and engage them especially because most of them here don’t speak English, so they won’t understand what is going on in the traditional media, they won’t have access to modern media, so we decided to come here and interact with them with their language.
“YALI is all over Nigeria, we have a hub in each state, this campaign is conducted simultaneously in each hub across the country, we started in November 2018 across the country, we will continue till the election starts, then we will continue as election observers.
“All together we are targeting 200,000 electorates in Abuja, after our campaign, we will get them to sign that they will vote and not involve in any form of violence, we will collate this data that we will release through one of our partners,” Ezeani said.
The Representative of the traditional ruler of Dutse, Akuku Joel, expressed pleasure on the expected impact of the sensitization exercise on him and his subjects.
“Am happy as they came to enlighten my people and enlighten me also during the time of the election. I have also advised my subjects to reject any form of inducement during voting, they should vote for the party and candidate they trust,” he said.
Another resident, Mr Levinus Akuma while commending YALI for the initiative, called on Nigerians to desist from vote selling and ensure they vote the right candidate that would represent their interest.
“I feel very happy to see a group bringing this kind of campaign to our community, I am a resident of this community, and we are happy to see people coming to tell us what we need to do during the election, I am happy with the initiative.
“The issue of not selling our votes is a good advice, we should understand that when we sell our votes, we have sold our opportunity for 4 years, what we are supposed to get in 4 years, we have sold it out, and we have no right to complain what the government is doing that is bad because we have already collected our money. So I advise my people not to sell their PVC,” Mr Akuma said.
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