Lanre Omotoso
By June 20 this year, the people of Ekiti State will participate in Governorship election to elect a leader who will steer the ship of the State for another four years.
Unlike the general elections, Ekiti State is among the Eight States of Ondo, Osun, Kogi, Edo, Anambra, Bayelsa and Imo that elect their Governors separately from the General Elections due to various litigations.
According to research, Ekiti State has a population exceeding 3.5 million with youths constituting about 70% of the total.
Among the youths are artisans, students, okada riders and farmers to mention but a few.
Available data indicated that only a total of 360,753 people out of the 988,923 registered voters, voted in the state’s third off-cycle Governorship election on June 18, 2022 across the 16 local government areas of the state.
As the election day keeps counting down, Radio Nigeria took the microphone to samples opinions of some undergraduates who are among the over 2 million youths in the State for their preparedness towards the poll.
Among the undergraduates in Ekiti State is Tolulope Olanrewaju who does not have interest in the electoral proces.
According to her “The reason I don’t want to vote is because I don’t have a voter’s card and don’t know where to register for one”.
Another undergraduate, Roqeebat Akorede said “The reason I don’t want to vote is because I am not interested and don’t have a voter’s card”.
Similarly, Oluwadamilola Ogungbade emphasized that “I don’t have voter’s card, and I am not ready to have one”
In the same vein, Naheemah Abdul-Ganiu stressed that she didn’t have interest in selecting whoever becomes the Governor, hence her lack of interest to procure voter card.
Fatima Yaya in her response mentioned that discouragement from her parents not to vote scared her from registering for the voter card.
Emmanuel Ogunrinde claimed that he was pre-occupied with school activities during the last registration exercise and the distance to the school from registration center was not trekable for him.
His words ” The reason I don’t have voter’s card is because I was at the school during the voter’s card registration and couldn’t register while in school”.
Oluwasegun Adegbite Olamilekan maintained that he had voter’s card, but feared that school activities may not permit him to vote.
“I have a voter’s card but I might not vote if school activities doesn’t permit me”, he submitted.
The respondents added that they could not leave their school activities to be searching for registration points, hence the need for electoral body to cite polling registration center in their campus.
Meanwhile, a Lecturer in the Department of Psychology, Ekiti State University, Professor Lanre Adebayo charged various stakeholders such as Indepedent National Electoral Commission, INEC, National Orientation Agency, NOA, Political Parties and authorities of higher institutions on the need to let the undergraduates see electoral participation as their civic responsibility.
Professor Adebayo suggested that INEC should deploy technology that would make it simple for undergraduates to register and vote online, because they were more active online than other categories of Electorate.
He also charged them to create polling booths across campuses in order to make voting attractive to the teeming youths.
The Psychologist also charged NOA on the need to build the linkage between elections and good governance through school to school engagement of undergraduates about importance of electoral participation.
“The undergraduates lack interest in electoral participation due to high level of unemployment, struggle by parents to pay school fees, believe that their votes did not count, lack of government presence, lack of political ideologies”, the Lecturer added.
He enjoined political parties to present undergraduates as their candidates to serve as moral booster for their colleagues “When political parties give the undergraduates the opportunity to serve as their executive members or candidates, it will motivate them that they are part of the society that matters”
Professor Adebayo called on Vice Chancellors of Universities, Rectors of Polytechnics and Provosts of Colleges of Education to work out modalities that would enable their schools not to be closed during elections so that the undergraduates could perform their civic responsibilities while on campus.
He also called for inclusion of civic education in the school curriculum so that the students could see electoral participation as part of their contributions to nation building.
However, despite various stakeholders involvement at enlightening some Nigerians, including undergraduates at participating in electoral process, some youths have resolved not to participate in the process with reasons best known to them.
With the excuses given by the respondents, it is obvious that the stakeholders in the electoral process needed to do more at rebuilding the confidence of these youths in the election so there would not be room for non-state actors to hijack them for negative reasons.
