Malam Garba Madami, the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Kwara, says the number of women on voter’s register shows they significantly outnumbered men in the state.
The REC stated this when he paid a courtesy visit to the Director-General of Michael Imoudu National Institute for Labour Studies (MINILS), Mr. Issa Aremu, on Wednesday in Ilorin.
He observed that women presidency can be possible when they have support of their female counterpart with the support of youths.
According to him, women possess the wherewithal to rule Nigeria in the next dispensation with their impressive turnout in the continuous voter’s registration.
Madami, however, declared that the idea of having woman president in the country remains a mirage because women were never in support of one of them.
He noted that people have been lobbying Mrs Amina Mohammed, the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, to join the presidential race on account of her transparency, hard work and intelligence, but regretted that she would eventually be pulled down.
The INEC chief, however, advised women to unite, form a strong force and prepare themselves for the nation’s leadership.
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“In Kwara alone, the number of registered voters for women had outnumbered that of the men by over 3,000.
“We also need the youth to come on board, as the youths combined with women is 70 about per cent,” he said.
Responding, Aremu commended the National Assembly for amending the Electoral Act, which allows direct primary for political parties and electronic transmission of election results from polling units.
He noted that INEC was becoming one of the fastest growing institutions in Africa with its breakthroughs in recent elections conducted in parts of the country.
The director-general added that democracy has come to stay in Africa with almost 23 years of uninterrupted civilian administration in Nigeria.
He pledged the readiness of MINILS under his leadership to be part of the election monitoring team to further guarantee the credibility of the nation’s elections. (NAN)
