The 2015 elections may have come and gone, but the lessons I gathered will remain ever green in my heart.
One of the very striking feature during the 2015 Presidential Election collation was the voters strength of the Northern part of Nigeria, which was as a result of their massive turnout during the voters registration exercise.
While the south South part of Nigeria were struggling with a few thousands of voters, the North delivered their votes in hundreds of thousands and millions, and hence the outcome is the Government we now have in place.
Suffice it to say that while the south South have gotten the privilege of increasing her voters strength and thereby increase her decision factor, the on going voters registration exercise has been greeted with a few discouraging factors which if not taken into consideration immediately, may affect our strength once again in the 2019 General Elections.
1. Centralization of registration unit to one place in an LGA; while mobilizing and encouraging people to go out and register if they did not, I noticed that INEC has only one registration center in each LGAs.
How do you expect them to meet up with the hundreds of people who are turning out to register? Some people have to travel from residence to the LG Secretariat, who will fund their transport?
2. It is a known fact that their data capturing machines can data capture only 60persons a day, what happens to the remaining who have left all they had to do for the day and travelled that distance for the exercise?
3. Failure of the machine is becoming very rampant. A friend in Uruefong Uruku Complained bitterly how they had to wait for hours just because the machine failed and lot of people left. How do we get these voters who left to come back for the exercise?
4. Prior to the 2015 elections, the voters registration exercise was done in unit basis. We had INEC staffs go down to units, which enabled voters stroll down to their units and register. Why this style now?
OBSERVATION :
Me think that the North having been satisfied with their voting strength and having realized that Nigerians have known their strategy have decided to tighten the process to discourage the South South from the exercise.
I also think that without sounding partisan, it is a ploy by the ruling party to continually keep their voting strength for future elections.
How are we sure that this practice is what is obtained also in the northern part of the country? Or they are only implementing it here and open it up in their region?
SUGGESTION;
I think that INEC should recruit more ad hoc staff for the voters registration exercise, and by so doing, they will take the exercise to to every ward and units in a LGA.
But if they cannot recruit more ad hoc staff, they should design a way of taking the data capture machine to every ward on a rotational basis.
All they need to do is inform the Leadership of a particular community that from so so so date till so so so date, they will be coming for the registration exercise in their community, and the Leadership of these communities will in turn inform all its people to come out.
The problem of data capturing only 60persons per day should be looked into because it is very discouraging that you pay your way to the LG secretariat, spend all day, just to be told to come back the next day which is not even a guarantee that you will be attended to when you come back.
However in conclusion, if we are expecting a very peaceful and transparent electoral process in the forth coming elections, then this Ongoing Voters Registration Exercise has to be properly revisited.
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