When voter registration turns nightmare

The dream of millions of eligible voters in the country to be involved in electing those who would govern them in the 2019 general election may be a mirage if current hiccups being experienced in the on-going Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise to acquire the permanent voter’s card (PVC) across the country is not sorted out in the next few days by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The exercise, which begun last year’s April, has been plagued by several problems, ranging from shortage of personnel, logistics and operational machines which have limited the commission’s operations across several states while discouraging several Nigerians from registering.

Several groups in the country have in recent times protested on several occasions over INEC’s alleged poor handling of the exercise.

However, despite repeated assurances by INEC that it had taken additional measures to improve the process, little progress seems to have been made.

This is just as long queues have persists at the registration centres, while several Nigerians have lost hope of being registered because they could not stand the rigor.

Findings revealed that in several centres across the country, voters to registration centres as early as rly 4am or 5am to put down their names in the register so they could be attended to for the day. The situation worsened toward the initial closing date of August 17, as more Nigerians besieged the centres to carry out their registration.

BDSUNDAY gathered that over 300 people were recorded at some centres, a situation that elicited the question why INEC decided to make the centres very few.

There have also been accusations that the commission was taking the exercise to the homes of some elite in the country.

A female school principal who spent a whole day at a centre before completing the exercise accused the INEC of nursing some sinister motives by the way it is going about the CVR.

“The suffering is needless. It is not as if one is sure that our votes would count this time. With what we are already seeing recently held elections; the rigging and all that, it is left to be seen if the INEC would allow the will of the people to prevail this time around. From the enthusiasm I saw in people, I can say that many people are willing and ready to vote this time around, but I so much doubt the sincerity of INEC,” the woman, who refused to disclose her name, said.

A resident of Alimosho Local Government Area in Lagos, Funmi Ogundepe, 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 arrangement where you register for national ID card, bank verification and others, is duplicity; why can’t we use these data for the exercise? It is a failure of the system; a country like Nigeria should have a source where data of its citizens 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,” Ogundepe said.

Some stakeholders, who spoke to this medium in Lagos, accused INEC officials in some centres of colluding with agents, asking them to bring people who in turn pay agreed amount upon realising the desperation of members of the public to register.

An Electoral Officer (EO) of the commission in a centre in Lagos, who spoke on condition of anonymity, denied instructing members of the public to be on the queue by 5am, stressing that the centre begins registration by 9am and closes by5pm and only attends to people who are on the queue.

“What they are telling you is not true. In this centre, we register about 300 people a day; we have not asked anybody to come in the morning by 4am or 5am to write their name, it is their decision.

“We only attend to those people we meet on the line. But you know since the exercise is closing soon, people are coming out because Nigerians like to wait for the last minute for anything.

“But we just decide to write names because the crowd is too much to control and since we discovered that it is the best way to have things go smoothly here, we decided to tell them to be on the line to make our work easy.”

A political analyst and politician, Ayo Kusamotu, berated INEC’s poor handling of the exercise, warning Nigerians that it could be a sign of what to expect in next year’s general election.

“The exercise has been a nightmare for lots of Nigerians; you can go to the centres and see for yourself. I am being told that some of these INEC officials are taking the machines to the homes of some elite to register them. These elite we know some of them don’t vote.

“I thought INEC have moved beyond this; I think it is a sign of what to expect next year; it may be a sign that the election would not be credible,” he said.

A top official of INEC, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that some of the people who were coming to carry out fresh registration had their data online with the commission and had previously been registered.

“It is not true that our officials are collecting money from any one; they are being monitored; how is that possible in a crowded centre?

“Some of the people you are seeing have their data online with us; they have been registered; a lot of them may have issues with their names or their banks, and other personal records.

“We have taken measures to capture all Nigerians, that is why the closing date was extended, but in some centres priority could be given to young people who just clocked 18 years after the last general election,” he said.

Iniobong Iwok