From: Geoffrey Anyanwu, Awka
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on Thursday, said that it would give Anambra State a special preference by taking the ongoing Continuous Voters Registration (CVR) to the Wards which are the Registration Areas (RA).
Disclosing this at the state’s INEC headquarters, in Awka, when a delegation of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) engaged the Commission on CVR, the INEC Administrative Secretary, Bar. Ongele Thomas, said the exercise at the Wards would last for one week from August 10 to August 16, 2017.
The coalitions that met with INEC included the Transition Monitoring Group, Voice to the People Partners (V2P) and Civil Society Coaition on Transparency and Accountability (COTAG), Civil Rights Concern leads the TMG coalition in the South-East of Nigeria and coordinates the V2P programme in Anambra State at the state level.
Ongele commended the CSOs for their show of concern and determination to have the coming election in the state succeed, hoping that having explained to them the methodology and the process the Commission was taking in the Continuous Voters Registration, they would assist in educating the people.
He said, “Anambra State has been given special preference in this registration, we are going to do registration particularlly for the coming election. “We are going to the Registration Area (RA) level to do registration so that those who are unable to come to the CVR now that the CVR is going on, will be captured in their various wards, so the complaints have been taken care of.
“This is going to take off from the 10th of August to 16th August, just one week then we continue with our CVR. While that RA registration is going on, the CVR will still be going on in various local governments.”
Answering questions on the preparation of INEC for the November 18 governorship election in the state, Ongele said, “We are on top of the situation. Even if they put the election next month, we are ready. What other preparations are we doing other that what we have been doing before which will still be done here?
“We are going to use our smart card readers, that is what we will use to accredit voters and you know with the smartcard reader if you bring a card that is not from here it cannot read you.”
Earlier, leader of the delegation, Okey Onyeka, had raised the disturbing issues linking them to the constitution and urging INEC to ensure that the right things were done.
He, on behalf of the CSOs, urged INEC to decentralise the registration centres to communities to ease the problem of distance and reduce the number of people that might not register.
INEC was also called upon to provide more personnel for the exercise and train them to be able to use the equipments effectively and provide more machines for the exercise, just as they urged the Commission to ensure that people were given their registration cards immediately after registration.