The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has warned against hate speeches by political aspirants, party faithful and other stakeholders during political campaigns.
The Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Imo, Prof. Francis Ezeonu, gave the advice at a one-day town hall meeting/sensitisation visit by Imo REC and his team to Nwangele local government area of Imo State.
Ezeonu said that the importance of a clean, violence-free and hate speech-free electoral campaign could not be over-emphasised.
He said that although the time for campaigns and elections were still in view, there was the need to sensitise the Imo electorate on proper behaviour ahead of the election.
The Imo REC said that election should not be a do or die affair and emphasied the need for election winners to lay aside party affiliation and embrace all other contestants for progress and development.
He assured of adequate training and retraining of INEC and other ad-hoc staff on proper conduct, handling of machines and other sensitive materials during and after elections.
Ezeonu called on the people of Nwangele to go out enmass and register in the ongoing voter registration exercise, stressing that politics is a game of numbers.
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Earlier in his welcome address, the Electoral Officer in Nwangele, Mr. Daniel Lifu, expressed gratitude to the REC for the visit and awareness creation exercise.
He said that the number of registered voters had increased tremendously since the beginning of the year, especially with the introduction of mobile registration.
According to him, a total of 3,850 persons had registered in the area since the CVR exercise.
The electoral officer, however, expressed regret that the collection of Permanent Voters Card (PVC) had remained low in spite of the fact that the list of uncollected PVCs were pasted at wards.
He said that so far, only 49 PVCs had been collected from earlier registration exercises, while 4,346 were still pending.
