Abuse Over Voter Choice, May Hinder Full Participation Of Women And Youths In Politics - Ekido

By Simeon OSAJIE

The conveners of the Stop Violence Against Women in Politics (Stop-VAWIP) and  Vote Not Fight campaigns, Girl Power Initiative (GPI) and Connected Advocacy has commended the efforts of all stakeholders, including security personnel, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and other Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) for continuing to perform their roles and responsibility for ensuring an inclusive, participatory, and secure 2020 Edo gubernatorial election.

May Ekido, Coordinator, STOP VAWIP Edo state and Deputy Coordinator, Girls' Power Initiative (GPI) gave the commendation recently in Benin at  a press briefing in collaboration with Vivian Sexual Assault Referral Centre and Nigeria Association of Women Journalists, (NAWOJ) Edo state.

She however said,  "based on our survey carried out, it was discovered that violence against women during elections is responsible for non participation of women and youths  in politics, and therefore advised women and youths to take a queue from Edo women who has always deem it necessary to be involved in politics.

She said, "The Stop-VAWIP campaign is an initiative that seeks to establish the link between gender-based electoral violence and the low level of participation of women in politics. . Since 2015, the campaign and its state partners such as GPI and Stop VAWIP Response Committee have documented incidences of violence against women during off-cycle governorship elections in Edo, Bayelsa, Kogi, Osun, Kogi,Kaduna and Rivers State . The campaign has raised awareness on violence targeted at women during election and conducted advocacy initiatives to relevant stakeholders on the need to mitigate violence against women in politics. 

"The “Vote Not Fight”: Election No Be War Campaign is a youth-focused non-violence voter education campaign that seeks to promote peaceful participation by Nigerian youth in elections. The campaign uses peer to peer engagements, traditional and social media messages, town hall meetings, billboards and stakeholder engagement (with youth, INEC, security agencies, traditional and religious leaders, political parties, candidates etc.) to seek commitments to peaceful participation in elections. The campaign began in 2014 and has been implemented over two national elections (2015 and 2019) and nine off-cycle governorship elections.

The Stop-VAWIP campaign, she emphasised "deployed a critical system for coordinating service delivery and timely access to services for survivors: the response protocols. Through the protocol, hotline operators would share incident information with key stakeholders with the mandate to respond to such incidents. These stakeholders constitute the Stop-VAWIP Response Committee, to evaluate cases as they are received to determine how to verify and escalate them. As incidents are verified, the response protocols deploy respondents to survivors and/or the location of the incidents, hence leading to an effective response to incidents during the election. These respondents include police, social workers, and other victim support services in communities, such as shelters and counselors."