The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) will in the coming months organise presidential and parliamentary debates nationwide.
Whereas the parliamentary debates will be held in all the 275 constituencies, the presidential debate according to the NCCE will be held in three zones, namely: Northern, Middle and Southern in September, October and November respectively.
The Commission will do this in collaboration with the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC).
This was disclosed in an interview, Mrs Joyce Afutu, NCCE Director of Public Affairs had with the Ghana News Agency.
In the interview, Mrs Joyce Afutu, also said that the commission will roll-out civic awareness programmes to enable the public demand accountability from public officials whilst intensifying education on electoral offences and sanctions.
According to the Commission, it will also undertake door-to-door/dawn and dusk broadcast to encourage voters to cast their votes in the general elections. This exercise will be done from September to December.
The NCCE Mrs. Afutu said, will scale-up engagements with identifiable groups on civic and voter education, show relevant documentaries, and films in communities to promote non-violent political atmosphere, and public education on the Public Order Act.
“We will use Radio and Community Information centres to educate the electorate on the need to participate in the elections; participate in election observation,” she said.
The NCCE would also engage in post-election education on good governance and peaceful co-existence.
During an earlier interaction with the media to outline NCCE’s activities for the year, Ms Josephine Nkrumah, Chairman of the Commission said they will work with other stakeholders, including the Electoral Commission, the Election Security Tax force, National Peace Council and Small Arms and Light Weapons and will identify hot spots in constituencies to develop proactive measures to deal with issues that would come up.
She added that, the Commission would engage with marginalized and excluded groups, organised bodies as well as the youth on voting processes.
“We appeal to the media to play its role not to amplify the intemperate language by reporting the intemperate language used by politicians during campaign season,” she said. Madam Nkrumah appealed to the government to retool the Commission to function effectively, especially in the election year.