ABUJA – Prof. Chike Okolocha, the Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Benin, said uninformed electorate was dangerous to democracy of any nation.
Okolocha said this in a lecture at a maiden roundtable organised by the Electoral Institute (TEI), in collaboration with the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (TEI), in Abuja on Monday.
He said voter education had become critical in the emerging democracies as a strategy to stimulate, protect, sustain and institutionalise popular participation in governance, especially through elections and voting.
He stressed the need to give adequate attention to voter education, especially to improve the prospects of 2015 general elections in Nigeria.
He said voter education was important to ensure that voters understood and were curious of their rights, issues at stake and political system.
“An uneducated electorate is dangerous to democracy. It is key to electoral disputes occasioned by invalid or illegal votes, confusion on election day, disputed election results, riots and failure of the democratic process.
“Failed elections often immediately have devastating consequences which may even threaten the very existence of the country concerned,’’ he said .
Okolocha, however, indentified some conditions antecedent for successful voter education in Nigeria to include impartiality of the electoral authority.
He also stressed the need to address impartiality and ineffectiveness of law enforcement agencies, electoral violence and poverty.
Also in his lecture, Mr Jide Ojo, Development Consultant and Public Affair Analyst, stressed the need for strategic partnership among the different stakeholders in the electoral process ahead of the 2015 general elections.
“Whether it is pre-election phase, election day, post election phase, election is an unending cycle and all hands must be on deck to educate the public on what is going on,’’ Ojo said.
He said that all election stakeholders, including INEC, legislature, security agencies, civil society organisations and judiciary must recognise the role of media in election process.
Ojo further called on stakeholders, including media, to avoid hate speeches, inflammatory statements and things that could heat up the polity of the country.(NAN)