By Yemi Adeleye
Lagos – Ms Darcy Zotter, the Head of Public Affairs Unit, U.S. Consulate, Lagos, on Thursday urged Nigeria’s Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to change their strategies in mobilising citizens to participate in electoral processes.
Zotter made the plea while delivering a paper entitled:”Role of CSOs in Mobilising Citizens for Election Participation” at a day workshop organised by African Youths Initiative on Crime Prevention (AYICRIP) in Lagos.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the workshop tagged: “The Role of CSOs in the Mobilisation of Citizens for Electoral Participation” was in partnership with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Lagos State.
The envoy, who noted that recent elections had shown poor turnout of electorate, urged the CSOs to cease from wasting resources on radio and TV adverts and employ the use of personal touch with electorate.
“When we talk about CSOs in the context of United States, generally speaking, your role is to simply get out the voters regardless of who people vote for.
“There are eight key elements that CSOs can do in order to get people to vote. The first one is educate people, educate them well and educate them all.
“A Columbia University based-political scientist has proven that talking to youths and parents on the importance of voting is one of the key components. Get the message out well.
“To get the voters out, peer pressure plays an important role. If everybody is voting, you won’t want to be the person left out. Another element in getting out the voters is healthy competition.
“This is the one I really want all of you to take to heart because in my work as a Public Affairs officer, I get a lot of project proposals.
“CSOs submit their proposals to me and they want funding from us and it could be for something like to get out the voters.
“Honestly, this is an activity that we want to support.
“But I tell you an activity that we won’t support, I will not support when I see that significant amount of the budget is put to things like radio time, TV time, no, you don’t need it. It does work.
“In studies across the world in Israel, Japan, United State, Sweden, these four different countries with different cultures-have demonstrated one of the single most important element in getting voters is the personal touch. Nothing replaces that.
“Forget mass emails, forget radio times, forget televisions, it simply doesn’t work,” the Deputy U.S. Consul-General advised.
The envoy, who noted that people were extremely busy in Nigeria, urged that SCOs needed to make it easy for the electorate in terms of where the polling booth are and transportation.
Zotter, who urged CSOs to educate the people about issues and to place special attention to timing, said that people should know the importance of their votes.
According to her, people are incredibly busy in Nigeria and CSOs must pay attention to timing and make the message easy.
She urged the CSOs to knock at people’s door by leaving their offices to talk to people on what the issues were weeks before polls.
In his opening remark, Mr Chris Ibe, the Chief Executive Officer of AYICRIP said that CSOs played a critical role in creating enabling environment for electoral matter to thrive.
According to him, the motivation for the programme is aim at how can CSOs NGO drive citizens’ participation in electoral process and curbing electoral violence.
“What is our role in choosing the right candidate? What is our role in making sure that electoral mandate are protected. We cannot leave INEC alone in this.
“CSOs must come together as a group, organisation and individuals to activate those activities that will motivate citizens to be part of electoral process.
“The fact remains that most citizens are tired, elections have always been concluded before conduct of the poll.
“Hence, this gives riggers the opportunity to go ahead and bring those leaders that will not think about citizen after election.
“So, if you so choose to stay out of election, don’t you ever complain, you see INEC needs more voter education partners,” Ibe said.
The CEO, who commended INEC in Lagos State for its commitment toward delivering seamless electoral processes, however, said that the result of the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration has failed to reflect the population of Lagos.
Ibe, who urged the people to participate in electoral process, advised CSOs never to go into partisan politics.
In his address, Mr Sam Olumekun, the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), INEC, in Lagos State said CSOs’ roles included voter educators, information disseminator, mobilisers, feedback agents as well as system’s stabilisers through anti-violence campaign.
Olumekun, who was represented by Mrs Ijeoma Okey-Igbokwe, INEC’s Head of Department, Voter Education, Publicity and CSOs, said that the roles, if effectively performed, would yield free, fair and credible elections.
According to him, it will make citizens make informed decisions and ensure electorates are law abiding. (NAN)
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