The CLEEN Foundation has called on the Advertising Practitioners Council Of Nigeria and the Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation to be alive to their responsibility as the 2015 general election approaches.
Negank Daniel, CLEEN Foundation’s Programme Manager, stated this on Thursday during the presentation of CLEEN Foundation’s 10th edition of the 2015 election Security Threat Assessment.
Daniel cautioned the government and security agencies to live up to expectation and stop all threats that will result to violence during and after the elections adding that reports indicated that virtually all states where elections will be conducted in the country are prone to violence.
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He said “APCON and NBC should effectively monitor and sanction media organisations and stations publishing advertorials with hate speeches; The early warning and response capability of the security agencies should be strengthened ahead of the polls and subsequently, a review of election security management be conducted after the general elections to ensure that areas of lapses are identified and remedial measures taken for future elections.
The role of vigilantes and other non-formal security organisations operating outside of the formal security framework should be properly defined and regulated to ensure that they complement rather than compete with, or oppose the police and other formal security agencies that have the constitutional mandate of providing security before and during the elections”.
Also, the CLEEN Foundation urged INEC to intensify its awareness campaign on the modalities for IDPs to vote especially for those who are outside of formal IDP camps as well as those who are presently outside their state of registration.
INEC, the National Orientation Agency and the civil society should as a matter of urgency should intensify efforts on voter education and civic education programmes that fully educate the citizens as to why and how they must vote with the PVC.
INEC should endeavour to make supplementary card readers available and accessible to polling units on election days to avoid unnecessary delays in the accreditation process. The challenges observed in the pre-test exercise should be immediately rectified and the adequately public sensitized; INEC should develop a process of dealing with the issue of discrepancies of details on the PVC and the Card Reader in a way that the Card Reader can be reconfigured in a timely manner so as to avoid disenfranchisement of any voter. Additionally, INEC should provide options that will facilitate and fine-tune the biometric authentication process.
Also, Daniel highlighted that violence can be prevented when adequate provision for transportation must be made for INEC staff and election materials especially in the rural, riverine and other difficult terrains of the country.
This is crucial as delays in deployment of staff and materials as well as other logistic challenges on election day could be misinterpreted as a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise Nigerians; The INEC should make sure that all its poll workers are adequately trained particularly as the use of card readers makes the 2015 general elections different from the others conducted in the country.
Furthermore, election officials should be adequately trained on crowd management and queue control as many studies have predicted high voter turnout in the forthcoming polls.
Speaking further on the security Assessment, INEC was urged to collaborate with security agencies especially under the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES) to provide adequate security for the commission before, during and after the polls.
“Reported cases of politicians and others engaged in vote and PVC buying, thuggery, hate speech and other election offences should be adequately investigated and perpetrators prosecuted in accordance with the provision of section 124 of the Electoral Act 2010, as amended.
The Abuja Accord on violence-free elections should be complied with by all political parties and candidates; while this publicly and voluntarily signed accord could serve as a deterrent, the full force of the law should be brought to bear on all offenders.
Civil society organisations should intensify their voter sensitisations against electoral violence, upscale their peace
education and violence tracking. The use of the biometric verification and card readers means that unprecedented levels of sensitization are required as voters cannot rely on previous voting experience in 2015”
education and violence tracking. The use of the biometric verification and card readers means that unprecedented levels of sensitization are required as voters cannot rely on previous voting experience in 2015”
The CLEEN Foundation
The CLEEN Foundation (formerly known as Centre for Law Enforcement Education) is non-governmental organization established in January 1998 with the mission of promoting public safety, security and accessible justicethrough the strategies of empirical research, legislative advocacy, demonstration programmes and publications, in partnership with government and civil society.
The CLEEN Foundation are determined to maintain and uphold a tradition of free, fair and credible elections in Nigeria. They therefore, developed the Election Security Management Project to advocate for coordination of security sector planning at the national/state level, to engage and train civil society groups to independently monitor police conduct, to expose the police to set standards for discharging their electoral functions, to document their performance and to hold them accountable to these standards.
READ MORE: http://www.naij.com/405988-hate-speech-cleen-foundation-wants-media-sanctioned.html
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