With the rise of bad governance, fake campaign promises, disunity, the blame game, and the wake-up of religious and ethnic profiling and zonal sentiments ahead of the 2023 general election in Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria.
In Kaduna, the Partnership for Issues-Based Campaign, in collaboration with Legal Awareness for Nigerian Women has taken on the responsibility of educating voters about the dangers of disunity and the importance of electing credible leaders based on their competence rather than their regional, ethnic, and religious, or other sentiments that can root underdevelopment or create an enabling environment for bad band governance.
“The Agenda,” as the panel discussion is tagged, served as a panel discussion with aspiring leaders, who present their blueprints before members of civil society organisations and keep records of their words and promises as documents for reference after the emergence of any candidate for transparency and accountability.
Two gubernatorial candidates, Malam Hayatudeen Lawal Makarfi of the People’s Redeeming Party and Hon. Jonathan Asake of the Labour Party, presented their policy documents and technical engagements if they assumed duty as governors of Kaduna State for the two series of “The Agenda’s” One-on-One Policy Dialogue Series.
During the dialogue on Saturday, January 7, 2023, the labour party’s gubernatorial candidate, Hon. Jonathan Asake, through his blueprints titled “Our Pact,” vowed to use technology to combat insecurity in Kaduna State while prioritising community policing, engaging local hunters in a partnership with conventional security, and ensuring the revival of the state’s traditional institutions.
Such efforts will strengthen the security architecture and reduce the rate of casualties as youths will be identified and trained by security agencies to that effect.
According to him, his administration will promptly set up a special committee that will invest in intelligence gathering and collaborate with security agencies to identify, track, and apprehend informants and accomplices of criminal elements terrorising communities in the state.
Keeping the security of lives and property will be my administration’s priority, just as my campaign slogan, “Secure Kaduna, Restore Hope,” indicates.
While answering questions from civil society groups, Asake explained that governance is a “responsibility for which I have the ability, experience, and will to drive to a promised land. The debt profile of Kaduna State, which has hit nearly N500 billion, is indeed frightening, but we are determined to build a mechanism that will ensure internal revenue generation with proper management of resources that will increase our local production and reliability if elected”.
On the electorate and the candidates, Yusuf Ishaku Goje, a partner for Issues-Based Campaign, noted that the program “The Agenda” targeted enlightening Nigerians on a voting system that favours the citizens after elections.
According to him, one of the goals of the issues-based campaign is to ensure that a voter does not only obtain voter cards and vote blindly, but also has an idea of the capacity, credibility, capability, and even character of each candidate before voting.
However, we are scrutinising each candidate’s blueprints and testing their capacity beyond the rhetoric of “I will bring light,” building schools, hospitals, and many others.
We are wary of the technicalities, which is why we want to know why and how a candidate wants to get the resources so that at the end of the day, we hope to generate commitment that holds whoever wins accountable. He added
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