Youths resist alleged attempt to smuggle out registration machine

Some youths on Tuesday in Asaba, Delta State said they resisted alleged attempts by officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to deny them of participating in the ongoing voter registration exercise.

They youths claimed that they stopped alleged attempts by INEC officials to smuggle the registration machine from Oshimili South Local Government Area registration centre with large population of registrants.

One of the youths, Witness Sylvester, also accused the officials of wasting time, noting that there was need for INEC to increase the number of machines to the centre as a result of surging population of registrants.

Sylvester said while the people were complaining that the available machines were not enough, the officials were taking out one of the machines to “unknown area, so we have to stop them.”

But in a swift reaction, the Public Relations Officer of INEC in Delta State, Mr. Bukola Ojeme, debunked the claims that the machine was being smuggled out to unknown area.

Ojeme said the machine was being taken to another area based on the rotational plan of the commission to cover all wards across the local government.

“There is a rotation plan going on, so one machine should remain in the office while the other two are out and rotated inside the wards within the local government. So what was stopped today was as a result of wanting to take the machine because as you have the crowd there, other people are waiting in other rotation centres to be attended to.

“By the act of the youths today, they stoped the commission from carrying out it’s lawful duty. That is what happened,” he said.

Regardless, the youths lamented the snail pace of the exercise, wondering if there were ghost registrants being attended to by the officials.

According to Sylvester who claimed that he arrived the centre at about 4am, the exercise started by 9am and as at 11.27am, they had barely attended to 17 persons.

“We came here since 4am. On reaching here, we saw about 50 names already on the list. They said they would start by 9am and by exactly 9am, they called in the first 20 persons on the list.

17 of them were present and they entered, and up till now, the time if 11.27, they are yet to attend to 17 persons.

“They are wasting our time here, we don’t know if the crowd inside is multiplying or we don’t understand where the number keep coming from,” he stated. (Daily Sun)