Former President Goodluck Jonathan has asked all candidates for the elections in 2023 to make sure their campaigns don’t include any personal attacks.
Jonathan said this on Thursday, when the presidential candidates signed the peace agreement for the 2023 elections.
He told candidates, their backers, and supporters to be calm and focus their campaigns on issues that are important to Nigerians.
“We are at a turning point in our country’s history, and we have no choice but to work for national unity, love, and hope if we want to make the progress we want,” he said.
“We can’t afford to keep dividing ourselves along racial and religious lines through politics. This is because this kind of politics poses a serious threat to our unity, growth, and democracy.
“We need to be aware of how harmful hate speech, fake news, and mindless propaganda can be, especially in a place where unity and stability still need to be built up.
“I ask the candidates, their supporters, and those who help them run for office to be careful and focus their campaigns on issues that affect our people.
“They should never attack people unnecessarily or use bad language, because those are the things that cause chaos and problems during elections.”
Jonathan said that the candidates and leaders of the different parties should be in charge of making sure the elections are peaceful in the country.
He said that the quality of elections is often a good way to measure how stable a country’s government is and how much democracy is growing there.
“In this way, we want our democracy to be strengthened so that at the end of every election cycle, our voting systems will be seen to have made small steps forward,” he said.
