On Saturday the 4th of June, young people trooped to the streets of Abuja the FCT, for massive Voter’s Card Awareness Roadshow.
The Sensitization Campaign which took place across major motor parks and markets in Abuja was put together by the Young Leaders Rights and Patriotic Initiative of Nigeria (YOLPIN), a non-profit organization made up of young people across Nigeria, who are desirous of building the Nigeria of their dream through various programmes and activities geared towards building leadership capacity of young people, human rights advocacy, promoting democracy and governance and youth empowerment across Nigeria.
The President, Patriot ANDREW Amos Ugbede-Ojo made it known that the Roadshow is one out of their numerous activities in promoting citizens participation in democratic process of governance as we have been doing this across churches, mosques, radio talkshow, including social media engagements.
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 millions 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 card, 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.
We appreciate INEC for their support thus far and also seeking the support of other stakeholders with interest in advancing Nigeria’s democracy, as we have the human resource, knowledge, skills, networks, energy and capacity to carry out this awareness campaign across the country.