COMMERCIALIZATION OF THE INEC REGISTRATION PROCESS - BY DUKE AIGBOJE

While several stakeholders, local and international, are investing humongous amounts of resources in sensitizing and mobilizing members of the public to go get registered and obtain their Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) in order to achieve a higher level of political participation in the upcoming 2019 general polls, there appears to be a move by some powerful interests to sabotage these efforts as some INEC officials at some Registration Centres in Lagos have chosen to use this avenue as their opportunity to do brisk business, as they have craftily devised a money-making racket around the exercise by complicating what was ordinarily meant to be simple.

Members of the public, particularly in Alimosho Local Government Area of Lagos, have continued to decry the extreme conditions they have to go through, in order to obtain their PVCs, as residents have to risk their lives by leaving their homes within the ungodly hours of 3am - 5am to pick numbers in order to have their names on the list of 50 – 60 names that the INEC officials have decided to register per day at each registration Centre. 

While investigating this situation, we decided to beam our searchlight on Alimosho Local Government, being the largest and most populated local government in Nigeria, inhabited by an estimated 2 million people. First, we discovered that there are only 9 designated centres for registration for this Local Government by INEC, which include Shasha/Akowonjo, Egbeda/Alimosho, Igando, Ipaja North, Ipaja South, Ayobo/Ijon, Pleasure/Oke-Odo, Abule Egba/Alagbado, Idinmu/Isheri Olofin/Ikotun/Ijegun/Egbe/Agodo. 

On our visit to most of these registration centres, the first thing we noticed is the mammoth crowd that turn up for the exercise, most of them standing in the sun, awaiting to be attended to, in most cases, by an INEC official with only one laptop, while the other officials are busy managing the often agitated crowd.

Visiting the Igando/Ikotun LCDA centre on Tuesday 27th February at about 7:45am, I joined a crowd of over 100 persons who were queuing up at the entrance to the premises where the registration was being conducted. After standing there for up to 20 minutes, a man approached us, standing at the gate to the place with a sheet of paper containing names of some persons. He had barely called out up to 20 names when he said “if you know you are here and your name is not on the first 60 on this list, you should go home and come back earlier tomorrow to try if you can make it”. 

At this point, I had to approach one of the coordinators and asked what I had to do in order to make the first 60 for the next day, and he said “you can do it in two ways”. I got curious and asked him how. He said, “it is either you come as early as 3:30am to write down your name on the list and wait to be registered on the normal procedure which might take you several hours, or you can come in at any time of your convenience, even if it is 1pm, and pay a token of N2,000 and get your PVC within minutes. If you have your money right now, you I can assure you your PVC will be ready in less than an hour”. He was quick to give me his phone number with the aim of facilitating further correspondence in this regards.

On another visit to the Egbeda registration centre, which by the way is located inside a school compound – Millenium Senior Secondary School, Egbeda, the INEC officers in charge of the exercise did not show up until a few minutes past 10am, while the crowd in a desperate effort to get registered became rowdy, distracting the students who at this time were struggling to divide their attention between their classroom activities and the mellow drama that was playing outside the window view in their school compound. In a brief orientation, one of the INEC officials addressed the waiting crowd, saying that they were only going to attend to the people who made the first 50 on their list. 

After the address, one of the electoral officers who apparently had contracted to some touts around the neighbourhood, the task of compiling the list of those who would be registered for the day had to first confer with the boys, ostensibly to retrieve the list for that day. Seeing this conversation, I approached the person who appeared to be the leader of the area boys and asked him what I needed to do to be on the list. He responded, saying “we are the ones writing the names of the people on that list. If you can make it down here as early as 4am tomorrowmorning, you might be lucky to have your name on the first 50. But if you don’t want to go through that stress, you can just give me N500, and I will write your name on the list for tomorrowand then you can come in at any time of the day to get registered”.

This situation provides a conducive atmosphere for those who are desperate to avoid being caught in this chaotic registration process to part with bribe money just to get registered to obtain their PVCs. This appears to have been deliberately contrived by some INEC registration officers, perhaps in cahoots with some political actors to either discourage mass political participation or frustrate the efforts of those trying to achieve it.

It remains a puzzle, why registration centres cannot be spread across all polling units or at least every electoral ward of INEC in order to ease the process of registration.

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