The Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) of Ondo State, Mr. Olusegun Agbaje, has implored all major Voter Education and Publicity stakeholders in the forthcoming governorship election in the state to deploy sustainable and effective strategies that would lead to very high voter turnout and ensure a drastic reduction in incidences of violence.
The REC made the call in Ondo on Tuesday while addressing participants at the implementation meeting on Voter Education and Publicity for the Ondo state governorship election.
He made the call on the backdrop of recent experiences of violence and low voter turnout in elections despite a concerted effort by the Commission to ensure an all-inclusive, violence free process. Said he: “the need for a vigorous and more targeted voter education and publicity for the forthcoming election cannot be overemphasized especially considering the fact that the past elections conducted by INEC were characterized by pockets of violence and not very impressive turnout of voters despite the fact that a lot of work was done to boost the level of awareness and participation of voters.”
Mr. Agbaje stressed that since election violence and apathy among the electorate are some of the critical factors that are used to determine the degree of credibility of elections all over the world, it is incumbent on all of stakeholders in voter education and publicity to do all that is humanly possible towards ensuring that Ondo state governorship election is as all inclusive as possible, thereby strengthening its credibility.
He charged participants to contribute very useful, purposeful and sustainable ideas that would aid the Commission to further reduce the level of violence as well as raise the percentage of voter turnout in the state’s governorship election scheduled for Saturday, 26th November 2016.
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