§
Rounds
off electoral programmes
By Michael Nnebife
Countdown to Anambra
gubernatorial election, the National Orientation Agency (NOA), Anambra State
Directorate has concluded its mobilisation and sensitisation programmes towards
ensuring that the greater percentage of the legible voters in the state fully participate
in the November 6 election with community house-to-house engagement, a new
approach adopted by the agency to beat the security challenges in the state.
The State Director, NOA, Anambra
State Directorate, Charles Nwoji, made this known in his office in Awka while
briefing the press on the activities of the agency as regards the November 6
governorship election.
The NOA director explained that since
May this year, the agency had been engaging the critical stakeholders to ensure
that the entire electoral process was a success, expressing optimism that the
agency’s activities so far would result in a high turnout of the voters on the
election day,
He said, “as an organisation, NOA
has always tried to ensure that the state records a high number as much as
possible in voters’ registration and voting on elections days. We have being on
this, never letting any ground unexplored to ensure that the greatest number of
Anambra citizens, who are legible to vote participate in electoral processes.
“We divided our programme process
into three phases … the first is sensitisation on the need for participation in
registration of voters through the media and other stakeholders’ forums. The
second is community engagement and mobilisation focused on senatorial zones
with Onitsha, Aguleri, Awka, Nnewi, Ekwuluobia, and Abagana as sensitisation centres.
“We conducted well attended
forums, which comprised the representatives of various governmental and
nongovernmental organisations, community and religious leaders, public servants
among others. There, we exchanged ideas on what is to be done, and how it is to
be done.
“Now, we are on the third phase,
which is community, ward and household-to-household engagement – cell to cell, a
new approach we adopted whereby our over 150 staffers moved from community to
community, household to housed, market to market, and church to church, to ensure
that they engage the people in small numbers.
Beyond these, we have within the
past five months engaged a number of organisations, including INEC, Institute
for Peace and Conflict Resolution … we collaborated with them, for one purpose
of enlarging the total votes in Anambra State.
“The good thing is that the
collaboration paid off as we made inroad in the communities and other target
groups; and I expect that the result will show in the turnout of the voters in
the election,” he said.
Pointing out that Anambra has not
been known for violence, NOA boss renewed his call for peace and mass
participation in the election, saying that the security agencies had
consistently expressed readiness to guarantee adequate protection of the voters
during the election.
He said, “in our interactions
with the security agents, they repeatedly showed their readiness to protect
those, who will come out on November 6 to vote, and also ensure that there will
be no anarchy. Therefore, I continue to appeal to all and sundry, politicians,
agitators, unknown gunmen, to give peace a chance to save the image of the
state.”
Nwoji
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