CRC Bori-Zone held a Congress meeting at the traditional headquarters of Ogoni People, Bori on 01/02/2023, on the topic : Electoral Rights, monitoring and challenges, and Experiences for the 2023 elections.
The national coordinator, Bar Arochukwu Paul Ogbonna in his speech, urge CRC members to be more proactive this year. He encouraged every unit to introduce political education into their activities and use it as a tool to educate and enlighten their members.
Delivering his lecture, Mr Frank Nornubari described the current structure of Nigeria’s constitutional democracy as authoritarian. A situation where citizens including civil society groups are threatened and intimidated by the government to comply with every policy and decision of the government is undemocratic.
A cross-section of the members of CRC Bori Unit participating actively at the meeting
He said in a real participatory democracy, citizens are allowed to make free choices based on fundamental human rights and good conscience. He then emphasized the need for citizens to know their rights and stand up for it at all times. Mr Frank decried the militarization of the electoral process in Rivers State, where opposition parties are under attack during their electioneering campaign. He condemned a situation where INEC needs to take orders from the inspector general of Police before it could access and deploy men and officers to it location and facilities. He viewed this as a serious security challenge, considering the dimensions of insecurities in the country and cited cases where INEC facilities were burned down by yet-to-be-identified gunmen, and opined that it is imperative that both INEC facilities and staff should be given top security priority to ensure safety. He expressed worried that there may be low voter turnout in some areas if nothing is done to improve the security architecture. In view of his presentation, contributions and questions were made by participants.
In summarising the discussion, Barr Arochukwu express profound gratitude to the speaker for his brilliant presentation and also applauded all participants.
Nkpordee Basil
03/02/2023.
