As the continuous voter’s registration (CVR) to acquire the Permanent Voters Card (PVC) ended on Friday, no fewer than 40 million eligible voter’s country across may have been disenfranchised over poor handling of the exercise by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) finding by BusinessDay has revealed.
The exercise which begin last year April has 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.
It was initially scheduled to close on the 16th of August but was extended August 31th to August.
However, despite repeated assurances by the commission that it was tackling the challenges which have plagued the voters exercise since it began the reverse seems to be the case in several states across the country.
Investigation at some registration centres in Lagos shows that several people had to wake up as early as 2am to be in the queue so they could be registered.
It also was gathered that in some centres INEC officials were ordering hooligans in the area to help them coordinate the crowd, while only 50 forms where issued for registration every day, with a crowd of over 1000 people on the queue.
A middle aged woman Lola Ogunbola told BusinessDay that she had been coming to the centre for several weeks to register without any success.
“I have been coming here for the past one month but I have not done my own registration. I leave my house every day around 4am risking my life, what if I get raped? Please the government should do something about it,” a frustrated 34-year-old lady, who could not register on Wednesday, said.
On Tuesday and Wednesday when Ladipo Market, shut down, many traders rushed for the registration but could not register.
“Many people paid up to N5, 000 that day,” said a man called Madueke, who waited for six hours on Wednesday, but could not register.
An INEC official in Ikeja who spoke on the condition of anonymity, denied knowledge of sharp practices by its staff in the local government, while adding that it had deployed more logistics to the three centres in the local government which are public schools.
“It is not true what they are telling you, go to the three centres in Ikeja we have provided more logistic we have a stand by generator, we are not asking anybody to wake up and come and take number by 4am , we start registration here by 10am.”
The Chief Press Secretary to INEC Chairman, Rotimi Oyekanmi, said:
“It is not possible to go to the local government because of shortage of funds and personnel’s. In some states we have established mobile centres, but Nigerians are not interested they prefer to collect the PVC’s just for other personal purposes. For now the commission can’t go to the 774 LGA’s because of funds.”
Odinaka Anudu, Iniobong Iwok, Jonathan Aderoju
