Politics
Despite the impressive turnout of eligible voters in the ongoing Continuous Voters Registration exercise, some stakeholders have raised questions on the validity of the exercise and called on INEC to quickly look into the complaints and clear whatever doubts that may exist in order to assure Nigerians that their trust in electronic voting is not misplaced.
By Anthony Isibor
JUST barely two months after the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC announced the commencement of the Continuous Voters Registration, CVR, there have been an overwhelming willingness of Nigerians to participate in the process.
The first stage of the CVR as announced in June 2021 provides an online portal where Nigerians can register or request to update their voter information before proceeding to the next stage of completing the process physically at designated centres nationwide.
The exercise, which is expected to last for a year, has a detailed progress of distribution of the registrants by age, state/FCT, gender, occupation and disability for each week of the exercise uploaded to the Commission’s website and social media platforms.
The report of the seventh week of the exercise published on INEC’s website reveals that more than 2 million Nigerians have so far responded to the CVR. It also shows that youths between the ages of 18 and 35 are leading.
According to the report, the youths within the ages of 18 and 35 were 1,592,173, while middle age, 35 to 49 years old had 585, 802, the elderly; 50 to 69, had 238,606 and the those 70 and above were 33,062.
The report, which also has the state by state distribution of the response to the exercise showed that Osun state has the highest number with 346,819, followed by Edo state with 179,422, Bayelsa 160,793, Delta 117,400, Anambra 107, 217, FCT 81,489, Lagos 78,640, Kano 63,673, Kogi 63,144, Gombe 50,086, Cross River 46,769, Kaduna 45,799, Kwara 45,162, Rivers 44,874, Taraba 40,004, Akwa ibom 38,723, Ekiti 36,531, Niger 35,904, Oyo 34,390, Ogun 34,316, Ondo 27,306, Imo 25,964, Plateau 25,542, Bauchi 24,4470, Zamfara 21,839, Benue 19,589, Sokoto 18,926, Nasarawa 15,074, Adamawa 14,927, Jigawa 13,108, Ebonyi 12,962, Katsina 11,697, Kebbi 10,709, Abia 10,610, Yobe 6,363, Borno 6,328, and Enugu state had the least with 6,112.
INEC explained that these are people registering for the first time.
However, in a twist of events, a group, the Forum of Progressive Political Parties, FPPP, led by Idowu Omidiji, the Osun State Chairman of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, in a press statement published in the Daily POST of July 26, 2021, questioned the authenticity of the numbers.
According to the report, Omidiji, who spoke on behalf of his colleagues, Bello Adebayo from the Labour Party and Remi Ayanlade from the Young Progressives Party, YPP, stated that the forum observed with serious concern the authenticity of the geometrical and skyrocketing figures emanating from the website of INEC on a weekly basis of the ongoing CVR in Osun state.
Following this development, he called for an update and media briefing on the CVR as well as drawing the attention of the National Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu and his entire management to the scenario playing out in Osun state, which is just one out of the 36 states in Nigeria.
“While declaring that the outcome of the CVR exercise was totally suspicious and unexpected to the forum, Omodiji expressed surprise that in both Anambra and Ekiti where gubernatorial elections are to hold before the 26th July, 2022 election in Osun, the figures as copied from the INEC website indicated that as at 26th of July, 2021, Anambra state is having 65,014 fresh eligible voters, while Ekiti state whose election will come up in June 2022 has just registered 19,043 new and fresh voters.
“Our own Osun State has miraculously registered 259,450 fresh voters. We dare say that there is no sufficient, logical, political or economic justification for such an outrageous figure.
“It is also public knowledge that the ongoing CVR for fresh voters is being conducted online via the INEC website using the availability of internet, is it not a miracle that a state like Osun, which has one of the lowest and weakest internet penetrations, which is very far below that of Rivers, Kano, Abuja and Lagos states in terms of internet connectivity, usage and penetration, has registered close to 300,000 persons in less than 30 days?
“We make bold to say that the Forum of Progressive Political Parties in Osun state is greatly worried by the continuing reflection of events as being displayed by INEC,” he said.
The ADC Chairman declared that it was also worrisome and ridiculous that the CVR figures revealed that the new voters in the entire highly politically inclined North West, North East, South South and South East geopolitical zones combined together were far below what Osun state alone has generated in the last 21 days.
“This puts the integrity of the ongoing CVR exercise of INEC in question.
“We have been tutored and received briefings by an array of young ICT compliant gurus and engineers and we are convinced beyond reasonable doubts, going by the avalanche of evidences and available information at our disposal that the electronic server and few unscrupulous elements in INEC might have been compromised to fill an inexistent and unrealistic number from the backend of the INEC server,” he concluded.
However, it will be recalled that INEC had on August 13, 2021 raised an alarm on the existence of a fake portal for the CVR.
Okoye, while warning Nigerians against the existence of a fake CVR portal, said in a statement in Abuja that “INEC’s attention had been drawn to a post, which is currently being circulated on the social media.
He said that the website for INEC voter registration is different from the INEC CVR Portal.
The electoral body said it had not accredited any agency or organisation to capture details of voters on its behalf and that the official INEC portal for CVR “remains one”.
He gave the address of the fake portal as https://register.inec-pvc.online/ with shortened URL as https://bit.ly/INEC-PvcReg2021, and warned Nigerians to be wary of its existence.
Although INEC had earlier raised an alarm on the existence of fake portal for the CVR, there is need for more publicity on the ongoing exercise and efforts made to clear some doubts raised by some stakeholders on the validity of the data generated from the exercise.
– Aug. 21, 2021 @ 15:50 GMT |
A.I
Tags: Bello Adebayo INEC Labour Party Prof. Mahmood Yakubu Remi Ayanlade Young Progressives Party
