Peering Advocacy and Advancement Centre in Africa (PAACA), a non-governmental organisation, has urged journalists to get acquainted with the Electoral Act in a bid to strengthen Nigeria’s electoral process ahead of future elections including the 2027 General Elections.
The Executive Director, PAACA Ezenwa Nwagwu made the call during a one-day capacity-building workshop for media, in Kano.
He said the training was organised by PAACA in collaboration with MacArthur Foundation.
“We are in Kano in continuation of our engagement across the country to popularize the legal framework with which elections is conducted across the country,” he said.
Nwagwu said the aim of the training was to equip journalist with the requisite knowledge and skills to popularize the 2022 electoral act and INEC guidelines to be acquainted with election process.
“Lack of understanding of Electoral act is responsible for unnecessary tension and crisis.
“We find out that critical stakeholders are very enamored about election but are not very clear about the legal frameworks.
“INEC just released a 503 pages report but not many people are engaging it. The Electoral act 2022 and INEC guidelines are there and you still see Nigerians including prominent Nigerians speak very ignorantly about the Electoral processes,” Nwagwu said.
He noted that there is ignorance of legal framework for the conduct of elections and quite a lot of stakeholders are not conversant with the content and details of that process.
“We engage the media because they are the window to the minds of the citizens, to educate Nigerians to pay attention to the legal framework.
“The more we practice democracy, the more importance it is for us to also understand that the legal framework is also important,” Nwagwu said.
He charged the media to get acquainted with the Electoral act to further educate Nigerians about the Electoral act.
Also, the Chairman of the Kano State Chapter of the Nigeria Union of Journalist (NUJ), Abbas Ibrahim, described the training as timely and a wakeup call to journalists to acquaint themselves with the 2022 Electoral act.
He urged journalists to continue to use the code of ethics guiding the conduct of the profession.