Nigeria Faces Challenges Of Non-participation Of Majority In Politics – PLAC
BY GLORIA USMAN, ABUJA – The Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC), has said that Nigeria is faced with the challenges of how to get everybody regardless of their age, economic status or disabilities to participate in the electoral process.
It therefore called on the National Assembly and political parties to formulate laws that would deliberately expand political space to accommodate more citizens inclusivity.
Executive Director of the Centre, Mr Clement Nwankwo, who stated these on Tuesday at a stakeholders meeting on ‘Dissemination of Legislatives Guidance Tools for Effective Legislative Oversight on Inclusivity’, organised by policy legal and advocacy center on Tuesday in Abuja, also called on President Muhammadu Buhari to as a matter of urgency sign the passed Electoral Act amendment bill to ensure equal participation of citizens.
Nwankwo said from the recent political primaries, the number of women that have emerged is a major source of worry, adding that the essence of the meeting was to get people together to discuss the inclusivity of election purposes.
According to him; “Getting the greater majority of the citizens to be part and participating in electoral processes to expand our democracy to enable all segment of the society participate.
“The electoral system is faced with the challenge of ensuring that we have inclusiveness of the different segments of the population; that is, the women, persons living with disabilities and the youths who are part of the electoral process.
“There is need to ensure that these people are part of democracy and part of building the development in the country. Political parties and legislatures need to ensure that there is a lot of inclusivity in the political process of all these persons who are disadvantaged by economic reasons, by age, by location, geography, or by gender to be part of the democratic process.
“Parties need to make deliberate effort so that the whole conversation around inclusivity captures all that, and it is the point we are making.’’
Nwankwo, who expressed concerns over the decline of women participation in politics, called for concerted efforts by the government to deliberately expand the political space to accommodate more citizen in politics.
On his part, the Resident Electoral Commissioner, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Dr Nwachukwu Orji, said the commission identified some challenges of inclusivity and took some steps to address them.
Orji said that one of them was to ensure the inclusiveness of women because they constitute one of the major underrepresented groups in the electoral process.
He said that based on that, INEC developed the gender policy that guides it and specifies step by step actions that needed to be taken by the commission to enhance women participation.
Also speaking, the Chairman, House of Reps Committee on Human Rights, Hon Sadiq Ibrahim, said the issue of inclusiveness in the issue of democracy was crucial.
Ibrahim said where people cannot not participate for whatever reason maybe because of their gender, disabilities or the distance of polling units then it becomes an issue that should be cleared.
He reiterated the commitment of the lawmakers to study the challenges mentioned and to work on them to ensure that everybody is included in the process of election.
