Historically, Gambians have treated National Assembly Elections with little interest as manifested in the dismally low voter turnout in previous elections.
This year the National Council for Civic Education (NCCE) is determine to reverse that trend with aggressive and robust campaign on radios, televisions and online to jolt all registered voter to vote in the elections.
The NCCE as the nation’s flagship civic education institute has stepped up its campaign across the length and breadth of The Gambia and in the media in this electioneering period to limit voter apathy as much as possible and to ensure violence-free elections.
To that end, The National Council for Civic Education (NCCE) recently concluded a mammoth 20 days intensive civic and voter education campaign across 80 selected communities in Central River, North Bank, Lower River and West Coast Regions to galvanize citizens to participate meaningfully and vote massively in the elections. Taking the form of face-to-face community sensitisation meetings held in village Bantabas, the sensitisation was also complemented with radio, television talk shows, and other social media platforms.
The main objectives of the sensitisation which was funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) was to enhance citizen political consciousness and promote the culture of political tolerance as well as increase public awareness about their civic and political rights to encourage massive political participation and high voter turnout in the upcoming April 9th 2022 parliamentary election.
Speaking at the last meeting venues in Wulikama in Sanneh Metering and Kombo Lamin in Busumballa constituencies as well as Jababa and Jarra Sukuta in Jarra East Constituency, the NCCE campaigners reminded communities about the constitutional guarantee for political rights, the importance of voting in the national assembly election, campaign ethics, the importance and role of parliament and parliamentarians, and code of conduct for election.
NCCE’s senior programme officer, Ansumana Ceesay advised electorates to be law-abiding and desist from any form of election-related violence such as the use of abusive language during campaign rallies, physical assault of people, threatening people to vote for candidates who are not their choice.
Ceesay also counselled people not to allow to be used by politicians to do actions that are against the laws of The Gambia or do any act that will derail the peace of the country throughout the electoral processes.
Mr. Ceesay also advised electorates to desist from any act/form of election-related violence such as the use of hate speech during campaigns and allow people to exercise their civic rights by voting for their candidate of choice.
SPO Ceesay further counselled citizens not to allow to be used to do any act that contravenes the laws of The Gambia or has the potentials to derail the peace and security of the country throughout the electoral processes.
Similarly, he cautioned politicians to desist from any form/act that contravenes the legal instruments, policies and regulations governing the electoral process in The Gambia.
Reacting to NCCE’s interventions, participants in almost all the meetings expressed their appreciation to the NCCE for the timely engagements and provision of the much-needed information at this very important moment as the country prepares for yet another important election.
They said the interactions were very useful in raising their civic consciousness, political participation, making informed choices and more importantly ensuring a peaceful election.
They also encouraged NCCE to be conducting sensitisations of this nature even after the election on other key areas as this will improve the understanding of citizens on their rights and responsibilities and therefore appealed to the Gambia government and other development partners to give more funding support to NCCE.
