ANEEJ Calls on INEC to make voter registration, a continuous exercise
BENIN-CITY, NIGERIA. June 10, 2024… As the continuous voter registration exercise in Edo State ended across the state, Leading pro-democracy and human rights organization, the Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to put in place a continued voter registration and not for just few weeks close to election.
Acting Executive Director of ANEEJ, Leo Atakpu while officially releasing the report of its monitors to the public in Benin today noted that those who attain the right age of 18 years should be able to walk freely into and designated centers to register and collect their PVCs.
“As at when the registration exercise ended yesterday, many eligible voters who were still on the queue in some centers visited by our monitors could not be registered. This in our opinion is one of the downsides of the registration system adopted by INEC in Nigeria and different from what obtains in advanced democracies.
“In this era of digital technology, with most of the affected persons, being the Gen-Z generation, we expect that INEC should use advantage of growing reliance on Artificial Intelligence and other digital technological spaces to undertake uninterrupted registration of eligible voters nationwide.” Atakpu stated.
The ANEEJ monitoring Report also called on INEC to ensure that “the application for replacement of damaged cards and transfer of polling units should be done online without hassles so that people can conclude the exercise in the comfort of their homes.”
In the areas of inclusivity, ANEEJ called on INEC to “operate priority lines (queues) for persons with disabilities, pregnant women, aged persons and other categories of vulnerable persons, to facilitate their ease of participation in the exercise.” This, according to Atakpu, is to ensure that PWD and other vulnerable persons are not left behind.
While noting that the exercise was a huge success in spite of the observations, ANEEJ also called on INEC to properly train its ad-hoc Officials to improve on the efficiency of the exercise.
On the presence of several party officials from some political parties in some centers visited, ANEEJ stated that “For subsequent exercises, only one-party agent should be allowed to be at the registration center to avoid a situation where a particular party would dominate the registration process,” Atakpu pointed that if such goes unchecked, it was capable of undermining the credibility of the process.
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