Despite repeated assurances by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that it was working assiduously to eliminate challenges that have affected the smooth conduct of ongoing Continuous Voter’s Registration exercise (CVR), millions of eligible voters across Nigeria may be disfranchise over poor logistics and shortage of personnel in the various registration centres, according to investigation by BusinessDay.
Recall that recently, some groups staged a peaceful protest at the INEC headquarters in Abuja, over the poor manner the commission was handling the ongoing voter’s registration exercise across the country.
However, finding reveals that while there was large turnout of people for the exercise at the various registration centres across the country, they however complained of the slow process of the exercise, charging INEC to provide more machines and personnel to improve the process.
A resident of Alimosho Local Government Area in Lagos, Fatimo Yusuf, who spoke with BusinessDay, urged INEC to create additional centres, deploy more personnel and machines to the registration centres, stressing that the current arrangement had discouraged several Nigerians from taking part in the registration and acquiring their Permanent Voters Card (PVC).
“The process is slow. Personally, I have been here since 5am to register, and I am still in the queue. Some people have been here for two days, they have not register, INEC should adopt the former method it was using. That is, carrying out the registration at pooling units. Look at this centre; they are using only one machine in spite of the crowd,” Yusuf said.
A chieftain of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos, Wasiu Olushola, bemoaned the shady arrangement by INEC, stressing that some of the current challenges could had been avoided if INEC had conducted the exercise in pooling units.
“The method adopted by the commission is not working, several of our party members, Nigerians have not been able to register despite assurance by INEC that it was tackling the challenges. I have gone round most of the centres, it is just personnel and logistics issues. I hope this is sorted out on time because election is here, we don’t really have time, except we want to disenfranchise this people,” Olushola said.
An INEC official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in Ikeja, disclosed that the commission was redoubling it effort to register more people, while adding that more machines had been provided to some centres in the state.
“We are aware that a lot of people want to register and we are doing our best to register them. We have gotten more machines and generator to improve the process. We register about 60 to 70 people a day here, but it is not true that we ask people to come4am and write their names.
“We open here at the centres by 9am and the machines would not work before then. Nigerian would always complain no matter the method that is adopted for any process,” the official said.
When contacted, the chief press secretary to INEC chairman, Rotimi Oyekanmi, said the commission had initiated several measures to improve the voters’ registration exercise, adding that the commission had registered over 9 million voters since last year when it began.
“This figure is higher than the population in some West African countries, and it is instructive that INEC has only 16,000 staff nationwide to conduct this exercise.
“Therefore, modest achievements have been recorded. Recall that we began by carrying out the CVR only at the 774 local government headquarters, because this is what the commission could afford in financial terms.
“Yet, when the general public demanded for more centres, the commission responded by creating additional centres that went up to over 1,200. The commission also procured new Direct Data Capturing Machines (DDCM), which made it possible to capture more fingerprints.
“We admit that there are challenges, but we are responding as quickly and as efficiently as we can. We empathise with some Nigerians over the discomfort they feel while trying to register. We will continue to find more innovative ways of serving our citizens better,” Oyekanmi said.
