Newly-launched South West Independent Campaign Movement, SWICAM, has said it is working hard to ensure 1.5 million votes for the All Progressives Congress, APC, candidate and State Governor Biodun Oyebanji in the coming gubernatorial election.
The group said such a feat is possible if non-party strategy of campaign is employed to galvanise the people across the 177 wards in the state.
The group on Thursday said the entire South West has the second largest number of voters in Nigeria and is in a position to secure 15 to 20 million votes from the region if the people are effectively mobilised.
It, however, regretted that voter’s apathy in the South West is the highest in the country.
It made the remark in a communique issued at the end of its maiden Congress in Ado-Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital. The event attracted over 500 delegates from across the South West, Kwara, Kogi, Delta and Edo States.
According to the communique signed by its National Coordinator, Suleiman Olubayo; Fred Ojinika, and Idris Abukar, representing the Niger Delta, and Northern communities, in the South West, respectively, the group is set to change the voting culture in the South West.
“We are using non-party volunteers, speaking to teachers, meeting peasants on their farms, meeting students in high and higher institutions, market women and men, while professional organisations and the young and the aged are not left out”, it stated.
It noted that it would use Ekiti State as the starting point towards a new, conscious voter’s culture in the South West.
The group said Ekiti alone, with a population of over four million people is in a position to produce 1.5 million votes for the APC candidate, Oyebanji.
The group said the volunteers recruited to campaign in Ekiti are young people who will move from one community to another not just talking to the people but acting like evangelists with Information, Education and Communication materials.
“We have embarked on a revolutionary campaign. The difference is that the campaign is not led by the APC but by non-party members who are concerned about the need to preserve democracy against military intervention, sustain power shift to the South and to support the on-going efforts at restructuring the country which the APC has started”, it stated.
