The Health body responsible for disease prevention and control in Nigeria, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has released a new set of rules and guidelines for safely conducting State and Local Government elections in the country during the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed over 600 people in Nigeria already.
According to the NCDC, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), political parties, politicians, need to adhere strictly with the guidelines and lead by example to control the virus spread.
Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, the Director-General of the NCDC, disclosed this during the briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 in Abuja on Monday, July 6.
He said, “Today we are announcing and launching a new guideline for the conducting of elections during the COVID-19 Outbreak in Nigeria. Some states will be holding state and local government elections this year, being the first time we are holding elections of this significance during the pandemic. Therefore, we have developed these guidelines to support everyone involved – political parties, INEC, but most critically, Nigerians that will be going to vote in these difficult times. Voting still remains a civic responsibility and even though we are in the middle of a pandemic, we have to find a way of doing this safely and we have to adapt to the new normal. As we know, the virus thrives in mass gathering, so there is a challenge that we have in the way we have conducted our elections – pre-elections, during elections and post-elections. So, in doing this guideline, we try and offer advice on how to do this safely. We strongly encourage the use of television, radios, mobile vans, social media and other forms of communication as our politicians solicit for votes. We advise careful adherence to mass gatherings guidelines. Unfortunately, the virus doesn’t recognise whether we are conducting elections, religious gatherings or business settings – it just thrives when people come together. We have provided specific guidelines for these settings and none of them will be surprising and we’ll be explicit about it. We really want to urge our political leaders to take responsibility and lead by example; leadership will be critical in this era and we advise them to think of the lives of the electorates first. The electorate staying alive is much more important than any vote you can win.”