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INEC officials extort N200 to register voters in Ogun
BY MOSHOOD ADEBAYO
With the dust raised by the shoddy effort to distribute permanent voter cards in Ogun State yet to settle, officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the state currently engaged in the Continuous Voter Registration exercise are alleged to be demanding N200 to register each prospective voter.
Aggrieved eligible voters in Ado Odo/Ota Local Government Area of the state who were asked to pay before they could be registered expectedly screamed blue murder and came close to cursing the INEC officials for making them suffer indignities in the bid to perform a civic act. At the Council’s secretariat on Wednesday, they told the Sunday Sun how the extortion caper was carried out by the officials. What they said should make the Chairman of INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega worry deeply about the horrendous fraud that may be committed in the 2015 election.
According to the victims, the INEC officials perpetrated the illegal act with the connivance of some local government officials who served as their fronts. First, they would tell an eligible voter to approach a middle-aged man within the complex to pay the sum of N200 to him. If the voter accepted and paid, the front would write down the personal data of the eligible voter and inform the person to return the next day to be registered.
This was how Mrs. Omolara Taiwo, who claimed to have been a victim of the illegal demand got herself registered by the INEC official, who first persuaded her to meet the designated front.
Another eligible voter, Mr Alex Ojuromi, corroborated the claims of Taiwo, and lamented that the process was bedeviled by inadequacy of materials, breakdown of direct data machines as well as other problems.
His words: “Although I was approached to pay the sum of N200 for the civic exercise, I did not do so. I must confess that I am tired of coming around here for the registration exercise. I have been wasting my precious time, coming here for the past three days without being registered even after the extension of the exercise by two days in the state.”
Fuming, Ojuromi, a businessman said: “I am going home. I don’t care if I don’t vote in next year’s general elections. Why must I vote after all? Those I voted for in the last general elections did not remember me, for anything? It is their family members, friends and business associates only that they remember. Two of my graduate children are at home, unemployed,” he said and stormed off.
Other eligible voters across the state, while passing a damning verdict on INEC also alleged that politicians, their friends and family members took charge of the exercise, thereby exploiting the situation to their advantage.
Going by what they witnessed with respect to the PVC distribution and CVR exercises, residents who spoke with Sunday Sun submitted that the electoral body was not ready to conduct the 2015 general elections.
Many of them who could not find their names on voters’ register or even re-register expressed fears that they would be disenfranchised in the forthcoming elections.
Even with the extension of the exercise in the state and five others, anxious voters who besieged registration centres across the 20 local governments were lamenting their inabilities to register.
The inability of prospective voters to register was occasioned by the commission’s direct data capture machine, DDC, which they said frequently malfunctioned. Besides, shortage of manpower also to contributed non-registration of prospective voters.
Reacting to the exercise, the chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ogun State, Engr. Bayo Dayo said supporters of the party across the 20 local governments complained that they were not registered.
His words: “It is a big shame that INEC could not handle this simple exercise. This is the only country that I have seen where something as ordinary as registration of voters is so difficult. The way it is done in foreign countries is for the organization to simply put the necessary forms in residents’ letterboxes. The forms would then be filled and later returned to the necessary office by free post. But in Nigeria, you must lose your work, just to go and register to be able to vote. It is not good enough. Many supporters of my party came for the registration more than five times without success. By the time this faulty exercise ends, we should be asking INEC what they are going to do for those people that were not registered.
On his party, the Publicity Secretary of the Ogun State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress, Mr. Sola Lawal described the exercise as an abysmal failure.
He said: “A large percentage of our people have been disenfranchised systematically. I have gathered that not up to half of the voting population in the state had so far been registered. This is not good enough for democracy. The exercise has to be thoroughly reviewed for optimal success.”
Meanwhile, stakeholders in the state have called for further extension of the exercise. Speaking in this vein, a former member of the House of Representatives, Hon. Dave Salako, asked for a one-week or 10-day extension of the CVR exercise, arguing that INEC officials had failed to register up to a quarter of the people who had presented themselves for the exercise.
“I have gone through the length and breath of Ogun East, at the registration centres, there has been large turn-out of people but not even one quarter of them were captured. We were told that the machines they brought were epileptic. Why should they bring the machines that have not been serviced for two to three years? We had to help them out in servicing those machines. Not one quarter of the large turnout has been captured for registration. We are therefore asking for an extension of the exercise and we wonder why it is only in the South West that we are having this kind of problem. Those in the North are not complaining. It seems they want to disenfranchise us in the South West,” Salako said.
Similarly, a member of the Ogun State House of Assembly, Honourable Olayiwola Ojodu, appealed to INEC to extend the registration exercise by more than one week.
Ojodu, who currently represents Abeokuta North state constituency urged INEC to provide more DDC machines in each of the wards across the state in order to ensure easy registration.
“We have fears about the exercise and quite a lot of reservations on the part of INEC. INEC’s best is not enough. Prospective voters troop out in large numbers as early as possible to get themselves registered, but the inefficiency of the machines and other logistics have made the exercise difficult for them. I can say to you that in my ward, INEC has not recorded 40 per cent registration and this is not good enough. A lot of people will be disenfranchised if nothing reasonable is done. I say again that this is not the best of INEC,” he added.
Another member of the state House of Assembly, Remi Hassan said that INEC underestimated the turnout of prospective voters by failing to provide enough materials. Hassan argued that the additional days earlier given by INEC had failed to make impact on the conduct of the exercise. He however said that since the CVR exercise was continuous, prospective voters still had the opportunity to register in their various local government headquarters.
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