Election and Development Consultant with the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) West Africa, Chibuke Mgbeahuruike, has warned that Political leaders hate speech and inflammatory remarks could discourage a large number of Nigerians from participating in the 2027 general elections.
Speaking during an interview with ARISE NEWS on Tuesday, Mgbeahuruike said the use of threatening language and insensitive comments by members of the political class, against the background of existing insecurity, could make voters afraid to exercise their democratic rights.
“And believe it or not, a large segment of the populace will stay off during the election.”
He explained that political leaders often failed to understand the role of language in elections.
“I know what triggered this is the fact that we have a political elite that don’t mind their languages. They can say anything.
“They don’t care a hoot. Their language, they don’t know the role language play in politics or in elections. You know, by the time you deploy hate speech, deploy, you know, some insensitive remarks, comments, you know, even threatening people and all of that, the whole idea is you are trying to, you know, make no sense of the electoral landscape.”
Mgbeahuruike who examines emerging security threats ahead of the 2027 general elections said. “So our thinking is that definitely the election is going to interact very actively with these situations. And what we’re going to have as an aftermath is, we’ll be contending with, you know, some kind of violence, some kind of increased violence, even in the face of the conduct of the election.”
He outlined that CDD had been tracking security incidents in the four states through its Election Insecurity and Resilience Project. “Kidnapping has joined it. We have, you know, religious issues. We have political issues in the mix. And of course, we see how our campaign period has been ravaged by threats, by hate speech, by all sorts of things aimed at really warding off the people who are supposed to be at the centre of decision making in this very important election.”
Mgbeahuruike affairmed that threats could particularly affect women and young people, who are among the most vulnerable groups during periods of violence. “I mean, women and youth in this regard, they are the most vulnerable.”
He also called on political leaders to exercise restraint in their public statements and conduct, stressing that Nigerians should be able to participate in elections without fearing for their lives. “We are also calling on this, you know, political class to also behave responsibly because election is not for dying. I mean, we must be alive to partake in the election.”
On the geographical spread of the threats,
Mgbeahuruike identified Katsina, Benue, Plateau and Kaduna as the states receiving particular attention under the organisation’s project. “This month seems to be issues that have to do directly, violence that has to do with election. It escalated a little bit. The ones we call, you know, normal violence or normal conflict that does not have much to do with elections are also on the high.”
He said CDD was using its findings to alert relevant stakeholders and encourage early intervention before incidents developed into larger security threats. “Once we get them, they transmit to us. We verify them through our fact checkers, which we also, by the way, push out to the public. Once we fact check it, we know that this is a serious matter.”
Mgbeahuruike noted reports requiring community intervention were handled at that level, while more serious incidents were escalated to national and regional stakeholders. “For instance, when it comes to disinsecurity, we recommended that it should go down to the lowest level, not just local government, to the real communities. Extend this watch to the real communities. Involve the community leaders so that it will not be an issue for some people, it’s an issue for everybody.”
He added that the organisation had made recommendations to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). lFor the Nigerian police, what we recommend to them is whatever issues that were reported requires a kind of investigation, neck deep investigation. Not just from a distance to begin to make a conclusion.
“Those investigations are very critical for us to establish whether they actually happened or not.”
He said the overall objective was to improve the security environment before the 2027 elections and ensure Nigerians could participate without intimidation or fear of violence.
“The whole idea is to sanitise the electoral environment ahead of 2027 and even beyond.”
Erizia Rubyjeana
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