A new report from the Positive Agenda Nigeria (PAN) indicates that two minor political parties in Osun State are increasing their engagement with potential voters ahead of the state’s governorship election on July 16. The two parties are the Accord Party and the Labour Party.
It would be recalled that the Accord Party’s candidate, Dr. Akin Ogunbiyi, decamped from the largest opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party, after it became evident that he would not be able to gain a ticket from the party (PDP). The Labour Party’s candidate is Honourable Lasun Yusuf, a former deputy speaker of the House of Representatives. After failing to gain a ticket from the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress, he decamped to the party (LP).
“The Labour Party and Accord Party have risen to the challenge of engaging the voters on what they will do if voted to power on July 16, 2022. The Labour Party especially has been discussing issues around the economic prosperity of the state, and threats to lives and perceived injustice perpetrated by the APC against the candidate of the Labour Party. The party also focused on agriculture. For the Accord Party, its engagement has been on education and health”, PAN noted.
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As noted in her previous monitoring reports, PAN laments the little changes observed in how the two major parties in the state engaged potential voters on policies, though the ruling party kept performing better in terms of policy engagement. Personality disparagement as a campaign strategy still dominated in this 5th week report.
PAN reiterated, “We discovered that the ruling party is better on informed policy engagement and less intensive in disparaging the personality of the opponents. The leading opposition party (PDP) slightly engaged the policies or programmes of the current administration while it moderately disparaged the personality of the ruling party’s candidate and the party itself. We once again recommend that all political parties and their stakeholders be trained on responsible and representative democracy, the laws guiding people’s conduct successful election, and various moral values that must be promoted to bank a successful election.”
PAN therefore urges the state chapter of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in conjunction with the law enforcement agency to organise “activities that will deescalate tension and neutralize the activities of criminals” while the political parties should be more creative in “scrutinizing and analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the strategies adopted by one another and assist the electorate to pick the best.”
The full report is available here for download.