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From Idu Jude Abuja
The Director General, National Orientation Agency (NOA), Dr Garba Abari, has expressed confidence that the 2023 General Elections will hold as scheduled, despite the prevailing socio-economic challenges in the country.
He gave this assurance while receiving a delegation from YIAGA Africa, led by the Director of Programmes, Barr Cynthia Mbamalu, and other civil rights activists on a working visit, stressing that it is in the larger interest of all Nigerians for the elections to hold as planned.
Abari noted that with the collection of Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) over, the issue of migration of polling units becomes a serious and trending issue requiring urgent and robust sensitization across the country. He said only proper synergy between government and civil society will suffice to adequately sensitize citizens because of the many spaces in the country where that is hard to reach with communication technologies.
He pledged that the NOA will work with YIAGA and other willing organizations to ensure effective community-based sensitization of voters in their respective local dialects to ensure they can easily identify their Polling Units ahead of the elections and avoid disenfranchisement.
Earlier, Mbamalu and the YIAGA team intimated the NOA Director General of their election sensitisation and monitoring programmes, including the Election Results Analysis Dashboard (ERAD), the Election Manipulation Risk Index (EMRI) and Watching the Vote which will be deploying about 3014 observers on Election Day.
She spoke of the need for a massive national campaign to help voters locate and confirm their polling units and requested NOA’s intervention with translations of polling nit sensitization materials in local languages.
