As the 2023 general election approaches, a non-governmental organisation, Young Leaders Rights and Patriotic Initiative of Nigeria (YOLPIN), has advocated for massive voter’s card awareness and roadshow to prepare Nigerians for next year’s general election.
The president, YOLPIN, Andrew Amos Ugbede-Ojo, said during the roadshow that the exercise was one out of their numerous activities in promoting citizens participation in democratic process of governance and this awareness has been ongoing across churches, mosques, radio talk show, including social media engagements.
Ugbede-Ojo said the initiative was born out of their desire to building a better Nigeria, adding that the organisation also had in place various programmes and activities geared towards building leadership capacity of young people, human rights advocacy, promoting democracy and governance and youth empowerment across Nigeria.
According to him, this particular project was necessitated by the high level of invalid registration recorded by INEC in their April report where a huge 1,390,519 million out of 2,523,458 registration was declared invalid and about 20 million PVC uncollected.
“This is an indication of a huge awareness gap and a sign of possible voter apathy, hence the need to step in to ensure people get registered correctly and most importantly help them do their replacement of lost or damaged cards, or relocation of their polling unit and not to register for a new one.
We have been able to correctly register a minimum of 4,342 either as pre-registration and follow them up for capturing, or relocation or card replacement to ensure more people are able to vote in the coming 2023 general elections.”
While appreciating the support of INEC so far he however solicited for the support of other stakeholders with interest in advancing Nigeria’s democracy.
