How electoral body is making it difficult for people to vote in 2019

“Please don’t come and stress us o. It’s not as if they are paying us for these extra days of the registration. Look at my car. I have to fuel it myself. The laptop has no battery. They just tell us to come here with no motivation at all. No incentive. And you people come here to treat us as if we owe you anything. We don’t owe you. If you don’t want to register, you can go to your houses”, said the bespectacled INEC personnelin a black dress.

She was visibly irritated that she had to be here to register people to vote, when she could have been anywhere else in the world, putting her feet up and sipping on a Martini.

She was irritated. All four of the officials who were supposed to register voters ahead of the 2019 elections in this center, were irritated.

'Thunder fire all of you'

When they eventually settled down to the task of registering voters, their sole laptop wouldn’t come alive.

“You see what we are telling you? They give us substandard Zinox laptops. The laptop has no battery sef”, hollered another INEC personnel. “And you want us to be happy? Thunder fire all of you!”

One eligible voter suggested that since one of the INEC officials has a car, she should quickly drive to the INEC office in Surulere to fetch a new external battery.

“Would you pay for the fuel? It’s like you people don’t know what’s going on here. It’s like you people are mad”, she shot back.

“Ok, I’ll drive my car and we can go get the battery together”, offered the eligible voter. “Cool?”

“Cool”

Two hours later, they were back and registration continued. Except that when it was time to print the Temporary Voters Card (TVC) slips, the printer wouldn't work.

Cue more cusses from the INEC personnel and more wailing about how badly they are treated by INEC headquarters.

“See, they aren’t paying us decent money”, one INEC official told Pulse.“How do you expect us to be happy?There is no motivation".

When Pulse asked this angry INEC official if she would like to state some of their grievances on the record, she shot back rhetorically and in a fit of rage: “Are you going to give me another job if they sack me? We don’t talk to the press because if we do, they will sack us”.

Rocket science

Because the printer wasn’t working and the laptop was being slapped to power itself on, everyone who registered on the day was asked to return for their TVC the next day.

When Pulse rang the Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Rotimi Lawrence, to report the developments in Surulere, he cut the call and sent us a text message that read: “I am busy at the moment, please text me”.

Pulse sent a text message to Lawrence detailing how frustrated and ill motivated INEC personnel in the Surulere area are. The text read as follows:

“Hello Sir. My name is Jude Egbas. I am a journalist at Pulse. I have been visiting PVC registration centers in Surulere. Staff here are complaining of poor working conditions, dead laptops, laptops without batteries, printers are bad, no transport allowance, no motivation from INEC. It’s all cranky around here. Please can you help look into this? What exactly is going on? Thanks”.

Mr. Rotimi is yet to respond to the text message, a month after.

One of our editors who visited registration centers in the Isolo area of Lagos told of long queues, angry INEC personnel and frustrated eligible voters. This editor had to pull a stunt to get registered.

“It’s hell here, man”, he told this writer in between laughs.”Nigeria is a jungle and registering to vote shouldn’t be rocket science. But here we are”.

Several Nigerians have shared how they have given up registering to vote because it's taking them several days to do so. "We have to keep going to the registration center and then they will ask us to come back tomorrow. Sometimes, they will move to another center without prior notice or information. We will now be looking for them up and down."

Across the country, Nigerians have been sharing tales of how INEC staff or personnel are turning the voter registration process into a nightmarish endeavor.

PVC for sale

On August 15, 2018, sports journalist Shina Oludare reported that INEC officials in Ondo were asking folks to part with the sum of N1,000 if they wanted their Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs).

“Dear @inecnigeria, collection of PVCs at LA Primary School, Ondo Town costs =N=1,000. You either pay or get walked out! Officials there claim they are acting based on your instruction. Explanation please !!!”, Oludare posed on twitter.

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One new voter lamented to Pulse this way: “Why must everything in Nigeria be so difficult? Why? INEC isn’t encouraging people to vote at all. This is frustrating and discouraging. They are daily disenfranchising people".

Number of newly registered voters

According to the electoral body, 12,682,792 Nigerians have been newly registered to vote. Of this number, 813,110 have collected their PVCs.

There have been 640,706 requests from folks to transfer their polling units to their current neighborhoods and 998,993 have filed PVC replacement requests.

Of the newly registered, 6,850,558 are male and 5,832,234 are female.

On August 14, INEC extended the CVR (Continuous Voters Registration) to August 31, 2018. The exercise had been earlier slated to end on August 17 until stakeholders called for an extension on the basis that there were still millions of unregistered Nigerians out there.

“The exercise will continue in all the designated registration centres every day, including weekends, but excluding public holidays, between 9am and 5pm”, INEC said in a statement.

The continuous voters’ registration exercise commenced on April 27, 2017 and there have been noticeable embarrassing and logistical glitches in that span.

Nigeria heads to the ballot to elect new leaders across all tiers of government in February 2019.