On Tuesday, a Facebook memory popped up on my phone and it was about a post I made one year ago when the continuous voter registration exercise by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) commenced.
I wrote that: “Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) has started. Some people will organise and sensitise their people for massive participation. Some people will be in the media complaining about the process while their people boycott the exercise or show apathy towards it. Some people will visit the centres every day and go through the hurdles, if any, till they’re registered. Some people will say it is time consuming and they do not have the luxury of time. On election day, those who do not have the PVC will complain the loudest. Another election cycle will come and the beat goes on. I just said I should let you know that if you don’t have your PVC, register and get one. This is no time to agonise!”
The reminder made me to reflect on current issues around voter registration and I came to the conclusion that in Nigeria, just as French writer, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr said in 1849, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
I was resident in Lokogoma area of Abuja around 2011, when I attempted to get my permanent voters card (PVC) for the first time.
There was a registration point in the estate so every morning, on my way out, I’ll stop by, hoping to register. On each occasion, I’ll pick a number slip and it was always in the hundreds. Every day, I’ll return to find that they were not even close to the number and I’ll retire home.
This continued for two weeks but I was determined to get my PVC so I got thinking.
My light bulb moment came one evening when my sister and I were discussing the issue. We decided to write out numbers on slips, resume at the registration centre and be the ones to give out the numbers.
The night before, we got papers, a pair of scissors and pens then we stayed up late into the night cutting and writing numbers on tiny pieces of papers.
At 3am, we stormed the registration centre armed with the papers and kept watch till about 5:30am when the first man showed up and we gave him a slip and so on as more people came.
By the time staff of INEC resumed at 9am, we had given out over 300 number slips and of course, we were first and second on the queue. That, dear reader, was what I went through, to be able to exercise my civic duty.
It didn’t end there.
When it was time for collection of the PVCs, we were informed that we had to go to Kabusa village and pick up at the primary school there. The INEC officials were not returning to the places where people registered to ease the collection so anyone who wanted their card had to look for them.
We didn’t know where in Abuja Kabusa was, neither did we know how to get there but we had to find our way there to pick up the cards.
The nonchalance of INEC officials who would just point at a pile of thousands of cards and ask you to search for yours is story for another day.
The continuous voter registration exercise is ongoing and the experience of 11 years ago is what people still complain of today.
So many years down the line, innovations, improvement in the use of technology and all, things have managed to stay the same.
Until INEC recently announced an extension of the ongoing continuous voter registration exercise, there was a lot of hue and cry by those who were doing the last minute rush to get registered before the door is shut against them.
In Lagos, the Igbo accused others of frustrating their efforts to register while in Abuja, Christians alleged that they were being stopped by Muslims and so on.
Why do people wait until the last minute then go into a frenzy in attempts to do what they could have done earlier and more easily, creating false impressions about the process and capacity of the organisations handling the process? These are the same category of people that waited until their telephone lines were barred from making calls by the government before linking their national identification numbers to their telephone lines.
While it is true that INEC does not have it’s act together and the attitude of some of it’s field staff leave a lot to be desired, any other organisation could appear inefficient if they are swamped.
For whatever it’s worth, the last minute rush in the last few weeks may be paying off as INEC has revealed that the youths led the demographic for completed new voter card registrations at 6,081,456, out of a total of 10,487,972 as of 7am on Monday, June 27.
INEC said that 3,250,449 of the registrants completed the process online, while 5,381,247 did through physical registration, male registrants were 4,292,690 Female: 4,339,006, Persons With Disabilities 67,171, and Youth made up 6,081,456. The gender breakdown of the registrants who had completed their registration comprised 4,292,690 male and 4,339,006 female, with the gender category showing that 6,081,456 of the figures were youths, while 67,171 were Persons with Disabilities (PWD).
INEC also said that it had received a total of 23,560,043 applications, including those applying for voter transfer, requests for replacement of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs), and updates of voter information records, citing that 12,317,963 of the applications were from male, 11,242, 080 were from female, while 187,904 applications were received from PWDs.
The states with the most completed new registrations are Delta state at 396,900, Bayelsa at 379,438, and Rivers state at 372,406.
While the numbers are impressive and are bound to increase with the 60 days extension, the real issue is the millions of PVCs that end up in cabinets in INEC offices after people register and the cards are produced.
As at May 2022, INEC said there were over 20 million unclaimed PVCs in it’s offices across the country.
So you see, registration is only one part of the process and the way I see it, the process can only be deemed to have been successfully completed when people follow up and collect their voters cards after they’re produced and then use them on election day. Only then would the effort count.
