With about Few days left before the on-going continuous voter’s registration exercise (CVR), by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), ends on August 17th, a state of confusion and panic have hit various registration centres across the
country due to the large numbers of Nigerians who have besiege the centres to carry out their registration, while officials of INEC seem incapacitated in handling the large turnout due to shortage of personnel and logistic.
The Continuous Voter’s Exercise (CVR) which began last year April nationwide, have been plagued by several problems, ranging from shortage of personnel’s, logistic and operational machines which have limited the commission operations across several states in the country.
There have been wide spread criticisms over the commission’s poor handling of the exercise from groups and political leaders across the country, however, there seem to be little improvement despite previous assurances by INEC, that it was tackling the challenges which could result in millions of Nigerians been disenfranchised.
Investigation by this medium in several registration centres across the country revealed that large crowds of Nigerians have besiege the centres to beat the August 17th closing date, however, several people in some centres in Lagos accused INEC officials of having a pre-determined number of people it would register in a day.
while calling for the postponement of the August 17th closing date and lamenting the strenuous and difficult procedure they have to pass through before they could register.
A resident in Lagos, Kayode Olufemi, urged the federal government to harmonise the Bank Verification Number (BVN) and the national identity card, by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), stressing that such decision would automatically stop the current duplication of biometric of Nigerians and could be used for the current Continuous Voters Registration exercise.
“The current system where you register for national ID card, bank verification, why can’t we use these data and for the exercise, it is a failure of the system, a country like Nigeria should have a sources where data of it people could be found. I have been here since morning you can see the crowd; what they are doing here is to register 150 people who wrote their names in the morning, some of them came here 4am after that they stop for the day” Olufemi said.
However, a chieftain of the main opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos, Sunday Ekanem, stated that INEC should have stationed their personnel in wards across the country to carry out the exercise, adding that the current procedure was too bureaucratic to achieve efficiency.
“What do you expect from this system, where it seem INEC is been authorised to act in certain way. One would have thought that they would carry the registration to wards, just like it was done in the past, rather than station it in their offices and one or two other places in the council.
“It is not working and you can see the crowd at the centres, a lot of Nigerians would be disenfranchised I can tell you that”. Ekanem said.
An INEC electoral officers in Alimosho Local government area (LGA) in Lagos state, Ajayi Adebisi, however, said that the commission was doing all it can to deal with the large turnout in centres in the local government, stressing that he had instructed his officers to register three hundred people in a day.
“We would deal with the crowd; we have put in measure and as you can see we are registering more people, I have told them to register 300 a day and we have extended the closing time from 3pm to 5pm, it is not with him by limit to extend the exercise” Ajayi said.
Lagos state Public Relation Officer of INEC, Femi Akinbiyi, said the exercise was going on smoothly in the state, stressing that the commission had extended the closing time for the registration from 3pm to 5pm, while bemoaning Nigerians fire bridges approach to issues.
“We are on top of the situation here in Lagos, it Is unfortunate that Nigerians like rushing, people are just turning out now em-masses when it is about to close, but we have put in measures to make the exercise go on smoothly across the state. It is not true what some of them are telling you, that they are been denied registration we have report from the local government areas and it is like 800 700 people a day that they been registered” Ifabiyi said.
Rotimi Oyekanmi, the Chief Press Secretary to INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, ruled out the extension of the exercise beyond the current date ,adding that the commission needed time to produce the cards from the ones that have been registered and also display the voters register in compliance with the electoral law.
“We have put in measure to ensure the exercise go on smoothly across the states, and we have extends the time and deploy more personnel’s.
“There would be no extension of the date of Friday for the closing we need to produce the cards for the ones that had been done and display the voters register in compliance with the law.”
