Edo Guber: Election Officials Promise Vote Integrity, Warn of Legitimacy Crisis Due to Voter Apathy

In the countdown to the September 21, 2024, governorship election in Edo State, drivers of the electoral process have assured the electorate that their votes would count, while also tasking the political parties to mobilise potential voters to exercise their civic duty to avoid voter apathy.

This was the outcome of a one-day Policy Dialogue on Edo State Governorship Election 2024 organised by the Electoral Institute, Abuja, in Benin City on Wednesday, addressed by Dr. Anugbum Onuoha, Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, Edo State, Prof. Abdullahi Abdu Zuru, Chairman, Board of Electoral Institute, Abuja, and Prof. Hassan Saliu, Political Science lecturer at the University of Ilorin, who noted that political parties and leaders had a critical role to play to address voter apathy in any election in the country.

Speaking to the theme of the dialogue, “Enhancing Voter Participation and Inclusivity in the Edo State Governorship Election”, the stakeholders appealed to all participants in the electoral process, particularly the political class, to play the game according to the rules and regulations.

Prof Saliu, the guest lecturer, in his lead paper entitled “Enhancing Voter Participation and Inclusivity”, said the essence of the event was to enlighten and sensitise the electorate and residents of Edo State to come out to cast their vote for the candidate and political party of their choice during the election.

Saliu, who is also the President, Nigeria Political Science Association, NPSA, posited that globally, any election that did not enjoy a high level of participation, would not be regarded as being credible and very successful.

He said the essence of this policy dialogue therefore was to sensitise stakeholders in order to mobilise the electorate to actively participate in the election.

Underscoring the importance of high voter turnout at elections, Prof. Saliu said “You see, credibility leads to legitimacy. If people don’t feel able to participate in an election, whatever the outcome, it will suffer from legitimacy crisis.

“So, in order for the forthcoming governorship election in Edo State not to have any form of question mark hanging around it, we need to mobilise everybody around to come out and vote because, coming out to vote by the people will go a long way in making the election to be credible”.

In his remarks, Prof. Zuru, of the Electoral Institute, bemoaned the rate of turnout of voters in some of the recent elections conducted in the country which he said was unencouraging to INEC, especially in spite of all the innovations and efforts put in place to take the election to the doorsteps of prospective voters.

Zuru noted that the Commission was taking giant strides to ensure that every eligible voter in Nigeria exercised his franchise

He said “In spite of all these efforts (innovations) to ensure that elections are made easy for everybody, yet the level of voter participation and apathy is indeed worrisome to us.

“We expect that with such improvement in the conduct of elections, more and more people will be appearing in the elections so that we will have high participation of electorate in the election”.

Assuring that INEC would continue to play key roles in enhancing voter participation and inclusivity among the electorate through voter education and advocacy mechanisms, Zuru appealed to all stakeholders, particularly political actors, to play the game by the rules and regulations.

According to him, “We, on our part, as an electoral umpire, assure the good people of Edo State in general, and political actors in particular, that we shall abide by the provisions of the electoral legal frameworks, namely the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the Electoral Act 2022, INEC regulations and guidelines, as well as the manual for election officials as approved by the Commission

“Only eligible voters of Edo State will decide the next governor of the state. Your votes will definitely count”.

Earlier, Onuoha, Edo REC, said the dialogue was geared towards addressing voter apathy in the forthcoming governorship election in the state, as well as why people were not coming out to vote during elections.

Dr. Onuoha, who assured that the commission was not only ready to conduct credible, free and fair elections, stated that they cannot fail the people of Edo State, and that their votes would count.

He said the commission had carried out several advocacies, training programmes, among others, to ensure that the conduct of the election was generally accepted by all stakeholders.