John Odhe, YENAGOA
Prospective voters who were at the Yenagoa Local Government headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the Bayelsa State capital on Friday for the ongoing voter registration exercise were all disappointed.
Our correspondent gathered that scores of residents wishing to get registered and obtain the Permanent Voter’s Card (PVC) ahead of the 2027 election were seen milling around the INEC office with no one to attend to them.
A female staff of the commission, who refused to mention her name was on the registration desk but initially complained that there was no network.
When probed further, she said “the machine has been filled up with registration data. We need to offload some data.”
Meanwhile, some of the registration candidates who spoke to TNN accused the electoral umpire of deliberately disenfranchising them.
Mr. Precious Powedei said he had been a regular visitor to the INEC office for the whole week with the hope that he would be registered but to no avail.
“They know what they are doing. They don’t want us to vote. It is a deliberate act to disenfranchise Nigerians. How can a whole INEC local government headquarters, that is the whole Yenagoa municipality, have only one machine for registration?
“It is a shame. Shame on INEC. Shame on the federal government for hoarding registration exercise that is supposed to be as easy as registration for telecommunications network SIM card,” Powedei lamented.
Another candidate, Mrs. Ebi Jeremiah complained that she had spent days trying to get registered but the officials kept giving excuses, stating that INEC was not putting into consideration the fact that the registration exercise had a deadline.
She said with the current situation, many prospective electorate would be denied their voting right in the forthcoming 2027 general election.
INEC’s Head of Department for Voter Education and Publicity in Bayelsa State, Mr. Christian Utong did not picked his calls not respond to a text message sent to him by our correspondent for comment on the issue.
