The National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, Friday, listed three South West states of Ekiti, Osun and Ondo States as prone to electoral violence in Nigeria.
This was disclosed by the Head of Ekiti Operations Office of NEMA, Saheed Akiode, at a one day workshop on “Electoral Violence in Nigeria: Preparedness, Mitigation and Response Strategies” in Ado Ekiti.
“Apart from the fact that this phenomenon affects the credibility of the electoral system, the democratic system and the rule of law, the nature, extent and magnitude of violence and rigging associated with elections in Nigeria had assumed alarming proportions.
“This has therefore necessitated the need to organize this stakeholder’s forum to create awareness and test the level of preparedness in order to arrive at a reasonable mitigation measures towards reducing the impacts,” he said.
The workshop drew participants from Ondo, Osun and Ekiti States.
One of the participants at the workshop, Yaqub Sanni, urged politicians and electoral officials to have the fear of God.
“If there is fear of God, nobody will use other children as thugs. The security agencies will not support one political party against the other. There is a day of reckoning; everybody will give an account,” he said.
The Chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association, Ikole Ekiti branch, Mr. Ademola Adeyemi, while delivering a paper during the technical session of the workshop, called for the deployment of security forces to areas that have history of electoral violence and the intensive training of electoral staff and strict enforcement of electoral laws by prosecuting offenders.
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