72 Persons With Disability To Serve As Election Observers In Edo Guber

A Disable voter

The Centre for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD) in partnership with IFA, JONAPWD Edo State Chapter has commenced training of 72 females and males with disabilities  from the 18 Local government areas of the State as election observers for 2016 Edo State gubernatorial election.

The training is part of the activities for the implementation of project on Accessibility Review of Political Participation of Persons with Disabilities (PWD) for Edo State Gubernatorial Election.

The project is implemented with technical support from the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Kingdom Agency for International Development (UKAID).

Already, CCD has been accredited by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to observe the election.

Last month CCD with its partners launched the Leave No One Behind; Disability Votes Count campaign in Benin City, Edo state.

The goal of the campaign is to improve the participation of eligible citizens from Nigeria’s 25 million Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) in the country’s political and electoral process. CCD and its partners in Edo state are working to achieve this goal through short and long term objectives.

These include Advocating for relevant authorities including the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to make polling units and ballot boxes more accessible for PWDs; advocating for the use of sign language interpreters during all civic and voter education messaging on television; advocating for improvements in the distribution and reach of civic and voter education messages to citizens with different forms of disabilities; advocating for the use of braille IECs for civic and voter education at all levels and advocating for an improvements in the capacity of election officials to assist PWDs vote on Election Day.