As the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, resumes Continuous Voters’ Registration, CVR, exercise nationwide, the Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council, OYC, yesterday kicked off what it called neighbour to neighbour campaign.
The group said the campaign was an aggressive mobilization strategy to sensitize all the indigenes of the South-East region on the ongoing exercise.
Speaking while launching the exercise yesterday at Bende Local Government Area of Abia State, the Deputy President of the OYC, Dr. Arthur Obiora and the national secretary, Mazi Okwu Nnabuike, said the exercise would be replicated in all the 95 local government areas of the South-East.
The group had on the course of the campaign visited some community and religious leaders, including High Chief Kalu Orji Ogbuga and Pastor Uka Uko, who promised to mobilize every eligible voter in all the nook and cranny of the council.
The OYC said the exercise became imperative considering the poor awareness of Ndigbo on the voters’ registration exercise, which they said was the first determinant of the political power of the people ahead of the 2019 general elections.
According to them, “This is no child’s play; this is a time for Ndigbo to rise up to the occasion. It is not a time to say I am APC or PDP. It is a time to unite by arming ourselves with the greatest political weapon, which is the voter’s card.
“We are calling on the South-East governors and other political leaders not to sit on the fence; they must have to show due diligence and commitment to this project.
“We have already taken the lead and we shall not just carry out this aggressive campaign around the entire South-East but also monitor the performance of the INEC during this period of the exercise. The INEC should not deliberately disenfranchise our people as they did in the past.
“We are equally urging the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, to sing the exercise like a song as they mount the pulpit on Sunday.”
While calling on the Biafra agitators to be equal players in the campaign, the OYC observed that “we plead with them not to discourage our people from obtaining this all important voter’s card. Such negative campaign never did us any good in the past.
“Similarly, we also urge Ndigbo resident in Lagos and in some of the Northern States to return and get themselves registered at home. We say this because of the ugly experience in Lagos and some of these states during the 2015 election, where they were not even allowed to collect their voters’ cards. So, a stitch in time will definitely save us a million.
“This is, therefore, a clarion call on all the political, religious and pressure groups in the South-East to wake up and join us in this neighbour to neighbour campaign to safeguard our future.”
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