BY VINCENT UJUMADU

AWKA— WORRIED by the tension in some states in the South East geo-political zone over the outcome of the 2015 general elections, a non governmental organization, NGO, the Christian Community Initiative for Peace And Development, CCIPAD, is evolving ways of mitigating election violence in the area.

•Participants at the post election violence roundtable in Awka

With the support from International Foundation for Electoral Systems, IFES, through the European Union, EU, the organization instituted a project code-named Mitigation Of Violence in Elections, MOVE, which seeks to prevent and reduce election violence in the zone before, during and after elections.

Indeed, the group intimated stakeholders, including Resident Electoral Commissioners, REC, in the zone of their fears about the likely violence after the elections if the right things were not done, and while some took the advice given to them, others ignored them. The result is that even with the winners already declared, there are still tension in some states.

As a first step towards solving the problem, the organization assembled 35 stakeholders in Anambra State who listed causes of violence, especially after elections.

The participants included clergy men, community leaders, political party representatives, civil society organizations, CSOs, youth leaders, the police, National Orientation Agency, NOA, the media, among others.

Expectedly, they were all given the opportunity to narrate their experiences during the last general elections among which were the inability of the card readers to function properly, the role of money-bags who intimidated INEC ad hoc staff with tempting offers, overnight change of many ad hoc staff at the instance of influential politicians and their supporters, as well as the use of security operatives to cause disaffection at the polling units.

After the roundtable discussion that lasted for about five hours, the stakeholders agreed that there is need to tackle some issues in the electoral system before the next general elections in 2019.

One way of achieving the goal, they noted, is for the people to say, ‘enough is enough’ and deciding to deliberately shun politicians who only come around to bribe the people once the elections draw near.

They said further: “This is the right time for the political parties to begin to institute internal party structure to ensure that only those validly nominated stand for elections.

“Also, civil society groups should spearhead the eradication of corruption by speaking out without fear or favour and a programme has to be drawn on how to fight the canker worm in the polity.

Apparently elated by the quality of contributions by the stakeholders, the field officer of CCIPAD, Mr. Ezeta Chukwuemeka said there would be a zonal stakeholders’ meting to further discuss the issue next month.