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Nigerians have been enjoined to maximize the opportunities of the ongoing Continuing Voter Registration (CVR) exercise in order to prepare themselves for the 2019 elections.
The appeal came during a one day Citizens Engagement/Forum on Advancing the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) Exercise in Lagos on Tuesday.
The event, orgnised by the International Press Centre, Lagos under the Strengthening Citizens Engagement in Electoral Process (SCEEP) project implementation in Lagos, was executed with support of ActionAID Nigeria and the UKAid, through the Department of International Development (DFID).
Speaking at the event, Director, National Orientation Agency (NOA) Lagos, Mr. Waheed Ishola, urged Nigerians to ensure adequate participation in the CVR exercise.
“The first step is to register, if you do not register, you cannot vote and if you don’t vote, you cannot complain if someone is ruling you,” he said, adding that, “It is our duty at NOA to enlighten people because we don’t want people to be disenfranchised so there is need to include Saturdays which has not been included for now.”
Ishola also noted that the NOA has done its best in sensitizing the people. “We have done our beat because we know that Saturday is the only day for some people. My job as a Director at NOA is to feed the government back on what the people are saying.”
He, however, enjoined the participants who are drawn from the grassroots to go back to their various constituencies and tell other people not to keep complaining and sitting on the fence.
“We see many people on the political rally ground but on election day, you see few people. If change must happen then it must begin with our attitude to things,” he said.
In his own response, former Resident Electoral Commissioner for Lagos State, Mr. Akin Orebiyi, enjoined participants at the event to ensure they register to vote.
“If you have registered before and now relocated, you can transfer your registration to the new place. If you just turned 18, you have to register. For the first time, the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) is making that word ‘Permanent’ a reality because the exercise is an ongoing one,” he said.
Orebiyi stated further that, “The commission has opened centres that would run through the year and the operations continue till two month to the election; that is December but some people would still wait till the last day.”
He, however, warned the people to keep jealously their voter cards. “Let us also keep our Permanent Voter Cards (PVC) jealously like the way we keep our ATM cards or our money. INEC is obliged to replace it once in a lifetime. The commission still needs to do more, defaced cards should be reported to INEC and same with missing cards. The commission sees every Nigerian as a stakeholder.”
Also at the event, Head of ICT, Lagos office, Mrs. Seye Soriyan urged Nigerian youths just turning 18 to register to vote.
“If you go and register for the very first time, once the registration has been completed you will be given a temporary voter card to go with and the PVC will come later,” she enlightened.
On why the voter cards cannot be ready immediately, Soriyan added that “The permanent voter card cannot be ready immediately because there are various processes that will still be carried out there are processes the commission will undertake in order to consolidate all the data from the various voter card because all you give us are raw data we have to process it into the form that you will now see and process into the permanent voter card.”
Answering journalists on how INEC is coping with over 60 political parties, she said “one thing is sure, the INEC is not new at this and we will definitely find a way round it and things would be sorted out.”
Talking about inclusion of People With Disabilities (PWDs) in the electoral process, she said, “Specifically the voter education department is a department that handles such effectively. For instance we even have things in brail now to ensure such people in need of it are able to read.”
