Principals To Partner INEC On Voters’ Education

Principals of Secondary Schools in Rivers State, have advocated the entrenchment of a deep and strong democratic culture into the curriculum of education.

The principals as a way forward have also resolved to partner the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to establish clubs to organise voters education in Secondary Schools.

A communiqué at the end of a one day workshop with a theme: “Catching them Young for Democratic Values’ organised by INEC in Port Harcourt at the weekend, directed electoral officers to visit secondary schools within their local government areas to impact the culture of voters education among students.

At the workshop three short and over lapping papers were presented with emphasis on the need to enthrone democratic core value among students before they attain voters age.

In her paper titled: ‘Voter Education in Secondary School’s a resource person, Mrs Tonia Nwobi maintained that voter education in secondary schools has become imperative to expose the students to democratic election process, namely, political parties voting process and campaigns.

According to her, the benefits of voter education are too many, specifically, to demystify politics and elections.

Nwobi emphasised that with the demystifying of politics through voter education, the electorates or candidates would not see politics as a do or die affair. Noting that violence associated with election would be checkmated with sustained voter education at the secondary school level.

Mr. Onyemaeze Mba in his paper: ‘Content, Objectives and Methodology of Voter Education in Secondary Schools, stated the function of delimitation of constituencies which placed emphasis on where you register, is where you vote. He said this was necessary for the prevention of electoral conflicts, causes and consequence during election.

Mba explained that the objectives of voter education is to build a generation of future Ad-hoc staff, and volunteer corps in managing Nigeria’s electoral process.

According to him, one method of achieving this loft goal is through mock rallies, creation of face book, twitter account to share voter education ideas and essay on democratic issues.

In her paper Catching them Young for Democratic Governance in Nigeria’, a legal practitioner, Funmi Gaffar reflected on the regime of apathy during the last general election, and enumerated the benefits of voter education at secondary school level in order to achieve citizens participation in elections and democratic governance.