Youths match to INEC office in Lagos, demand more enrollment machines

A political group, Youths In Politics (YIP), Nigeria on Wednesday staged a peaceful walk to INEC headquarters in Lagos to demand more Voter Enrollment Machines.

The group, which arrived at the INEC office at Sabo-Yaba around noon, complained that the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) was taking a lot of time from applicants at various local government areas of the state due to long queues.

Addressing newsmen, the President/Convener of the group, Mr Micheal Nwabufo said the exercise was strenuous and time-consuming in most areas, hence the need for the electoral umpire to ease the process by taking the machines closer to the people.

In his words, “We are here to ask for more voter enrollment machines in the state. So many youths who want to register are discouraged because the process is time-consuming. This is why many are not turning up.

“Youths don’t have time to waste, so INEC must allocate more machines to Lagos state to ease the process in various local government areas.  In fact, INEC should put a machine each in the 245 wards in the state.

“The current number of machines in the state cannot cope with the density in some areas. Some areas need additional mobile registration centres.

“The exercise is taking too much time and days. We have long queues in some areas like Lagos Island, Oshodi Isolo, Alimosho, Eti-Osa and so on.”

The convener said the group was ready to volunteer in any way to assist INEC in organising and mobilising youths to register if the commission provided more machines.

According to him, one of the leaders of the group recently picked number 1000 while trying to register at Ajao Estate in Oshodi-Isolo local government area and on the second day, the same applicant picked number 700.

Nwabufo said: “We have gone round and we are not satisfied with the number of machines we saw.

“Sometimes, if you go to the INEC office in a local government area, you will see only two machines, and you see over 1000 people seeking to register. It doesn’t make sense.

“There aren’t enough machines. We are not pleased. INEC should take necessary steps to make sure that people get registered and get PVCs.”

According to him, the group has about 1.6 million members to help INEC in pushing out information and mobilising if machines are available.

Also speaking, Mr  Nelson Enwerem, one of the National Executive officers of the group, advised INEC to adequately publicise the timetable for the rotation of enrollment machines in each of the local government areas to help the people.

Responding, Mr Olusegun Agbaje, the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner in Lagos State said the state had the highest number of enrollment machines in the country.

The INEC boss, who noted that the crowd had reduced because of the extension, explained that the youth group were also surprised to get to the INEC headquarters office and see empty seats.

(NAN)