Decries low women’s participation
By Michael Nnebife
THE Executive Director, Centre for Transparency Advocacy (CTA), Faith Nwadishi, has commended the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), for introducing a lot of innovations in the Nigeria’s electoral system.
The CTA Executive Director gave the commendation during a media conference organised on Friday, in Awka, Anambra State, by the organisation to share with the public its observations from the few days preceding the November 6 gubernatorial election in the state.
Nwadishi also praised the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPoB), for calling off its sit-at-home order, South East governors, for their effort towards ensuring that the Anambra gubernatorial election should not only be held but also be peaceful, and the Inspector General of Police, Mr Usman Alkali Baba, for coming to the stakeholders’ meeting held in Awka, in time, even before the representatives of the political parties.
She, however, frowned at inadequate working relationship among the security agencies and advised them to work as a team to ensure adequate protection of lives and property of the people.
“We want to commend the management of INEC, for its preparation and the innovation it has brought in the electoral system in Nigeria. There had been reoccurring recommendationwe always had in all the previous elections about the accreditation of party agents; we are happy to notice that in this election, INEC has gone through that process of accrediting the party agents the way it accredits the observers...
Nwadishi (4th left) during the media conference
“We are also happy to notice that INEC has come up with colour codes for ballot papers for the local government areas …
“We also congratulate the Inspector General of Police, because last four years, an IGP held the stakeholders’ meeting we had up for two hours, but this time we were pleasantly surprised to see the incumbent IGP sitting down with the INEC chairman waiting for the politicians to come.
“We commend the professionalism of the security agents so far; we have seen the way they had been deployed; we noticed that they were carrying new gadgets and were in air-conditioned Hilux vehicles. We were informed that they had been paid unlike before.
“However, we are concerned about the synergy – the working relationship among the security agencies. They have to fine tune a team line between their working relationship … to ensure that they protect the lives and property of the people.
“We want to commend IPoB, for calling off their sit-at-home order, the South East governors and every other person that made effort to ensure that there will be a peaceful election in Anambra State. So, we call on the Anambra people to come out en masse and use their voters’ cards as the chief executive officers of the state to hire a person that will manage the state’s resources in the next four years.
“We know that before now there were court cases before the names of the candidates were finally published; we are hoping that after this election, there will not be prolonged court cases and we hope that judiciary is following up on this process. We don’t want a situation whereby an election would be conducted, results declared, but the judiciary will sit on and overturn those results,” she said.
Nwadishi emphatically expressed a deep concern over the low participation of women in politics despite huge incentives political parties claim to offer to the women of which she described as a lip service, accusing the political parties of not seeing the need to feeding women as candidates.
Her word, “The issue of women has come up again, 18 candidates, no single woman. This means that the political parties are paying lip service to women’s participation in politics; some political parties said they are giving nomination form free of charge to women; but in the long run, among the 18 candidates, there is no single woman. This is very worrisome; parties are not yet seeing the need to feeding women as candidates.”
Also contributing, two high ranking members of the organisation, Prof Anthony Ola Olusanya, and Prof Alex Asigbo, expressed confidence that INEC would deliver on its promises and commended the electoral umpire, saying it is “showcasing a lot of innovations that will further help to minimise any form of corruption in the electoral process”.
They observed, “if this Anambra election goes well, there will be hope for 2023” general elections in the country.
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