By Patience Ogbodo-Iwuagwu,
The European Centre for Electoral Process (ECES) has stressed the need for the active inclusion of people with disabilities in elections and political processes.
The charge was made by the Project Coordinator of ECES, Hamza Fassi-Fihri on Wednesday during a one-day training on inclusivity for Enugu State Independent Electoral Commissioner (ENSIEC), Women, Youth and Persons with Disability Representatives.
He said “we are very happy to partners of ENSIEC on this event, ahead of the upcoming local government election in the state given the importance of local elections, and the key role of local democracy in allowing citizens to have direct access to elected officials close to their homes and their realities.
“Indeed democracy never delivers as much as when elections are inclusive. Inclusivity guarantees that all people have the possibility to make their voices heard and this is even more important for the youth, women and persons with disability who are marginalized.
“The society has to invest efforts to ensure that those citizens have equal Acess to voting rights and help make this right real and effective. Not only because youth represent 60% of the population, women more than 50% and PEDs more than 20%. More importantly, it is because they are part of the society, importantly tenets of the nation and their voices have to be heard as well just like any other citizen”.
According to him, in the context of the current reform of the Electoral Act, representatives of PWDs civil society organizations and women youth organizations have been putting huge efforts to push for a change in the legal framework in a way that serves greater participation and representation.
“We as ECES are proud to have been partners of some of these organizations in this important milestone on the way to inclusivity.
“I’m convinced that this kind of dialogues and steps towards inclusivity is also taking place in Enugu and the upcoming election can be a real size test for CSOs to instrumentally mobilize these populations to get out their vote”, he said
He thereby charge Albino foundation to continue sensitization and civic education aimed to achieve free, fair, credible and inclusive elections in hand with ENSIRC and other electoral stakeholders.
In his welcome address, Dr. Michael Ajogwu, Executive Chairman of ENSIEC assured that the forthcoming LG election in the state will be free and fair.
ECES is a not-for-profit foundation headquarters in Brussels, promoting democracy and governance and also specialising in providing technical assistance and guidance EMBs around the world.
ECES has been working in Nigeria since 2017 as part of the EUSDGN projects in charge of component 1 which is dedicated to supporting INEC, Fosiecon and SIECs.
