With 14 days till the Osun 2022 governorship election, Positive Agenda Nigeria revealed in its weekly report on campaign monitoring that among over 1 million voters expected at various polling units on July 16 some are probably not considering the ruling party and the main opposition. This is based on the main conclusions from the eight week of monitoring of campaign activities of political parties in the state.
According to the report, “When PAN asked the potential electorate about policy programmes that would determine their votes, they identified education, economy, health, workers’ welfare and employment as well as security, infrastructure, agriculture and social programmes (in that order). That is, the majority of the sampled respondents (97.40%) would not vote for candidates and political parties that failed to address these issues and/or needs of the people in their campaign messages.
“We also found that candidates and political parties that disparage personality would not be considered during the poll. This is also applicable to political parties and candidates found to have engaged political thugs before and during the election to cause violence across the state. Though the percentage is small, some sampled electorate are likely to vote candidates and political parties that induce them with them money and materials.
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“The findings have validated our hypothesis that the closer the 2022 election, the more the political parties use verbal attacks as a campaign strategy. The level of attacks kept on increasing from week six of the monitoring, though the eighth week recorded the highest level of verbal attacks. This is an indication that the political actors in Osun State still believe in using the strategy as a campaign approach to de-market their opponents and woo potential voters to the side of their candidates.
In addition, as the election approaches, this 8th issue found out that politicians defected from one party to another. Despite their defections, each party, particularly the two main political parties, showed confidence in winning the July 16 election. Nonetheless, they kept canvassing votes and dissuading potential voters from thuggery and violence before and during the election. Although the parties preached against violence in their campaign messages, one then wonders about the level at which the two main parties accused each other of sponsoring violence and thuggery in some areas of the state.
Although policy-engaged messages in week eight were at their lowest since the monitoring periods, messages around infrastructure as well as workers’ salaries, welfare and employment dominated (most of which emanated from the ruling party). However, Osun digital natives were more interested in information about road construction, security, health and education (in that order) throughout the week,” the report pointed out.
The report says during the week, vote-buying and electoral malpractice resonated. “Although the two main political parties accused each other of sponsoring political thugs and planning to disrupt the election with thugs, the main opposition political party accused the INEC and security agents of planning to rig the election in favour of the ruling party. Its accusations mostly appeared in national newspapers and on Twitter.”
Download the full report here