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‘We Have A Serious Deficit Of Electorate Influence’: Ezekwesili Speaks On #FixPolitics Initiative, Improving Governance

Former candidate of the 2019 presidential election, Oby Ezekwesili, is yet again advocating for better governance in Nigeria, as she says more attention has to be given to improve the electoral process in the country.


 

Former candidate of the 2019 presidential election, Oby Ezekwesili, is yet again advocating for better governance in Nigeria, as she says more attention has to be given to improve the electoral process in the country.

According to her, there is currently a serious deficit of electoral influence in the society and the overall functionality of a society is dependent on the quality of its politics.

“Politics is extremely co-related with whether society functions or does not function. Secondly, politics is what happens in order to be qualified to be called a democracy,” Ezekwesili said during an interview on Channels TV’s Politics Today on Wednesday.

Her remarks followed the public launch of her #FixPolitics Initiative, which according to her, is aimed partly at discovering the relationship between politics and the economic performance of countries.

“I was interested in probing (that) because I had stepped down from running for office and what I had seen of politics in that very short period that I was in it, just opened my eyes to the fact that in fighting the issue of governance, we were waiting for too late in the day, that its politics that drives what ultimately becomes governance and so I wanted to see how politics could relate with economic performance of countries, so I had to go and have that reflection through the award of the fellowship in Berlin,” she said.

“A key finding is that any society ignores it politics at its own peril,” the former minister added.

Speaking further, Ezekwesili explained that there are two major categories of electorates.

Those who she described as low-income class voters who and the middle-class voters.

“There are different issues that concern those two segments,” she said.

“In the case of the low-income class voters, these are voters whose productivity is so low that their vote is not expensive. That is why you have incidents of purchase and sale of votes because their productivity is so low and election day is just another day in their lives, so, any amount of money that improves their productivity earning in cash, or non-monetary form is definitely an incentive that they would go for.

“In the case of the middle-class voters, they simply have opted out of the system. They get their voters card, not necessarily because they have to vote, but peradventure, they need to show that voters’ card to board a flight abroad, then they would have a voters’ card to show.

“So, that means you have serious deficit of electorate influence that you must design to change and that’s what #FixPolitics is determined to do”.