Nnaya Eziyi, Umuahia
South East states governments have been blasted for not doing enough to mobilize their people to participate in the ongoing continuous voters’ registration exercise in the country for the 2019 general election.
The Team Secretary of Coalition of Independent National Electoral Commission Accredited Observers Groups for the Continuous Voters Registration, 2017, Kalu Victor stated this while speaking to Thisage in Umuahia, the Abia State capital.
Confirming that the exercise had encountered hitches across the country due to security challenges, human factors and mechanical breakdowns, he added that some states had risen to the occasion.
“ But one thing about it is that some states are taking advantage of the exercise to ensure the registration of their people in good numbers, while here in the South East in particular, there are not doing so,” he noted.
He alleged that reports making the round point that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has compromised with bias intention to under- register the states.
Victor further asserted that some registration officials of the commission and security personnel had been extorting money from frustrated registrants in Aba North, Ohafia, and Umuahia South Local Government Areas to register them.
The secretary said the groups sees the exercise as not just crucial but special and important for the singular reason that it is coming ahead of the general election, for that matter
.He said as a way out the commission should as quickly as possible consider spreading the exercise down the grassroots and ward levels to capture those who may be handicapped in one way or another from participating in it.
“The commission should engage committed civil society groups, political parties and other stakeholders on an intensive sensitization and mobilization of eligible persons for the exercise,” he argued.
He commended both the government and the people of the state for “the relatively peaceful atmosphere of the state, mostly in the face of the evident frustration at the behest of the commission in the exercise.”
