Summary Report on our Second Team Leadership Election

The session began with a review of the previous session on the examination support system. Miss Itse Mirabel Ukubeyinje facilitated the previous session review.

After concluding the review of the previous session, Miss Sholaye Edun introduced the session for the day. She explained the electioneering process with a focus on registering to vote, deciding to contest any elective position or not, creating a manifesto, lobbying voters or campaigning, voting and declaration of winners. This set the tone for the election of our new team leaders.

As part of the discussions about leadership, she intimated to the participants that they are all qualified to lead, and hence, they can vote and be voted for. They should vote for who they are convinced will be a good leader for them. Whoever does not emerge as a winner now, should not feel sad, as they may win in subsequent elections. All the contestants will have to work with the winner of the election in their team to create a good team. 

Before starting the election, outgoing leaders presented their scorecard that included what they have done, how they succeeded in coordinating their team in the last three months and the challenges they faced as leaders. Happy Omomehin stood in for the leader of team Ikenwoli Mariam Aweni as she was absent.

The election session followed their presentation. During our first election in January, we had few persons that showed interest in contesting for the leadership positions. In this election, we had way more people show interest in contesting. This shows they are becoming more confident and more willing to lead. We had a total of eighteen contestants in this election, with the breakdown for each team listed below.

Five persons from team Olu Ikenwoli contested for the position of team leader.

Five persons from team Olu Atuwatse II showed interest in the contest.

Four persons from team Olu Ginuwa II showed interest in the contest.

Four persons from team Olu Erejuwa II also showed interest.

As part of the electioneering protest, each participant presented their manifesto to the general class. After this, they campaigned to their team members in order to solicit their votes. One interesting thing to note during this campaign was how Success Tuedongheye was able to convince two other aspirants in his team to step down for him. He is a member of and contested under team Ginuwa II. He is one to watch out for in the future.  

After the campaigns, the electorates (the rest of the participants) voted using ballot papers. They wrote the name of their preferred contestant on the ballot paper, joined the queue to vote and dropped the ballot paper in the ballot box. This was quite a significant process as we have come to observe elections in Nigeria involve a lot of vote-buying, ballot box snatching, killings and other electoral frauds. As a result of this, it was essential we presented the right type of electioneering to our future leaders.     

On the completion of voting, the Itsekiri NextGen Electoral Commission counted the votes in front of all the participants (candidates and electorates) with winners declared in front of everyone. Below are the winners of each team, including the votes for all candidates. 

Team Olu Ginuwa II

• Success - 7 votes - Winner
• Beauty - 3 votes

Team Olu Erejuwa II

• Praise Jolomi - 7 votes - Winner
• Peter - 3 votes
• Sharon - 3 votes 
• One invalid vote

Team Olu Atuwatse II 

• Besife - 9 votes - Winner
• Kelvin - 1 vote

Team Olu Ikenwoli

• Ayiri - 4 votes - Winner
• Moyowa - 3 votes
• Precious - 3 votes
• Destiny - 3 votes
• Happy - 1 vote

The runners-up automatically became the assistant, except for team Ikenwoli and team Erejuwa because there was a tie. This led to the winners choosing their assistants from those who had a tie. Ayiri picked Precious to assist her, while praise picked Sharon to assist him.

This whole exercise is a preparatory ground for these youngsters as they will have to get involved in politics someday either by contesting for political positions or by voting for others that present themselves for positions.

Also, our Itsekiri NextGen Electoral Commission showed they are competent in conducting free and fair elections. We hope the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will learn to do the same in Nigeria to avert all the bloodsheds we currently see during our elections.