INEC urged to increase logistics at CVR centres

The Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth and Advancement (YIAGA), an NGO on Monday in Abuja urged INEC to increase logistics at Continuous Voter Registration Centres (CVR)  to meet high demand for registration.

According to the NGO, INEC should increase its personnel, Direct Data Capturing (DDC) machines, and security among others to the centres.

INEC had in Nov. 2017, approved the creation of additional 370 Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) centres across the country.

Mr Samson Itodo, the Executive Director of YIAGA, who said this in a statement, also urged the commission to extend the registration period to 6 p.m.

Itodo said this would enable the commission to register more people, adding that more awareness should be created on the new registration centres to make it easy for citizens to locate.

He said that the organisation under its “WatchingTheVote’’ initiative, had deployed observers across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to monitor the ongoing Continuous Voters Registration (CVR) process.

“YIAGA observed that there is an upsurge in the demand for registration by citizens which must be met by INEC.

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According to a report based on our observation, released by the citizen-led election observation initiative, the challenge remains that some people are not aware of the location of CVR centres.

“Some of the machines in use are also obsolete and have been breaking down in the course of registration.

“The queues at the registration centres are unabated, security deployment is not across board and most political parties are not deploying their agents to monitor the process,” he said.

He said that the reports also showed that registrants complained about inadequate registration centres, especially in big Local Government Areas that required at least three or more registration points.

He said that late arrival and early departure of INEC personnel was also some of the challenges reported by the Observers.

Itodo commended the resilience of Nigerians to get registered even in the face of challenges, adding that INEC should work hard to meet the demands of citizens.