The UN Women Representative to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Ms. Beatrice Eyong, has lamented that poverty is a major cause of vote buying in Nigeria.
Beatrice Eyong, receiving National Officials of Women Wing of Christian Association of Nigeria (WOWICAN) in Abuja, that the UN women planned to initiate programmes to curtail the problem of vote buying in the country. She identified two major programmes – Rural Women Economic Empowerment Programme and Market Women Transformational Initiative – she said will be adopted to tackle poverty in the country.
Beatrice Eyong had highlighted: “We have talked about buying and selling of votes and that is a challenge.
“I tell you poverty is one of the things that is promoting buying and selling of votes and we are thinking that if we do programmes, we may improve women’s income status and other people in the villages.
“We have presented our two big programmes, and we are discussing with the minister and approval has been given. The UN is interested and donors are also interested.
“That is, the Rural Women Economic Empowerment Programme, which will be through climate smart Agriculture, which is digitally assisted by our digital platform called ‘Buy from Women’.
“So, this one is going to respond to the empowerment of rural women and I’m happy that you people also work with rural women.
“The second one is the market women transformational initiative.
“I saw that people are working on market women, they are working on petty traders, these are some of the things we are interested in.”
The CAN women representatives were said to be at the UN House in Abuja to seek collaboration to end gender-based issues in Nigeria.
Beatrice Eyong promised partnership with the group, saying the CAN Women association is a credible partner.
According to Beatrice Eyong, “You are a credible partner, we would like to continue our work with you to advance more good things.
“I am very happy that we have this collaboration with the Muslim women, we have to also involve them because they too will have other people.”
The National President of WOWICAN, Deaconess Victoria Ihesiulor, disclosed that they planned to run programmes to ensure women and youth shun all electoral ills. She said that the WOWICAN has 48 million registered members in different spheres of life across the country.
Victoria Ihesiulor stated: “We have planned sensitisation and mobilisation, we need to sensitise our women, call them together and let them know. We then organize trainings that vote buying and payments make one to suffer for many years.
“By the time they come and give you N5,000, N10,000 or even N20,000, after spending that money, the person enters for four years and takes another four years, that’s eight years.
“You will suffer for eight years If you don’t vote for the right people.
“We want them to know that getting rice, the issue of collecting wrappers will not address one’s challenges.”