Ughelli Residents Besiege INEC Office, As Deadline For Registration Of Voters Approaches

By Balogun Mabamije.

As the date to the end of the voter’s card registration draws closer nation wide, many residents of Ughelli in Ughelli North Local Government Area of Delta State have besieged the Independent National Electoral Commission,(INEC), office in Ughelli to register and get their voter’s card.

Many who got there as early as 8am yesterday, 9/6/22 to meet huge crowd at the gate, and waited till evening complained and blamed INEC for the slow process, saying that the commission was out with the mission to deliberately disenfranchise them.

One of them, a Pastor who did not want his name in print said the Ughelli INEC office was frustrating registration and operating nepotism.

However as at 5pm yesterday, members of staff of the Ughelli INEC office were still making frantic efforts to attend to the crowd before the night falls to register as much as they could.

One of the members of staff, Mrs Rachael Ajimoko who spoke to newsmen blamed the people for refusing to respond early enough to the call by INEC to register and get their voter’s card.

Ajimoko explained that the registration started since June, 2021 and INEC did everything to sensitise the people both on print, online, market places and broadcast Media to register and get their voter’s card but only few persons responded at that time.

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She said now that the online registration had closed the procedure had become cumbersome as it would take longer time to get one person registered, added to it was the lack of sufficient staff in the office as well as the capturing machine which were only four, she explained.

Ajimoko disclosed that going by the larger nature of Ughelli North Local Government Area, the commission had decided to move from community to community to register people there instead of focusing only in the office, saying that it was what informed the large crowd in the office.

She advised that people should learn to do things at the appropriate time instead of waiting for the rush hours before acting, just as she added that they would do their best to register all the eligible voters before the end of the exercise.