Some residents in Kuje Area Council, FCT, have decried what they described as tedious and cumbersome process in the ongoing Continuous Voters Registration (CVR) exercise by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the area.

The residents who spoke in separate interviews in Kuje, lamented that the exercise was marred by delay in capturing, slow process and other technical hitches.

The commission had earlier fixed June 30, as the deadline for the registration exercise in the country.

Abraham Gado, a resident, claimed that officials of the commission in the registration process were slow, a situation he said has made people become regular visitors to the office.

Mr Gado also claimed that the online registration was also not free from technical hitches and challenges sometimes not accessible.

“They should make the registration centres available in many places, at least the polling units as it was done before so that people can do it easily.

“The INEC should not make the registration cumbersome like this, except they want to discourage people from registering.

“The idea of registering online is not actually the best for now, not all Nigerians can operate a computer or even have the money to go and pay at business centres for registration,” he said.

Also, Ladi Jigo, complained of spending hours while trying to do physical capturing during the exercise and urged the commission to decongest the centres.

“l just came here for the registration, and based on what I am observing, I think INEC officials should try to keep to time,” she said.

Samuel David, who said he was at the INEC office to pick up his voter’s card, which had been with the commission since 2021, said they kept telling him it was not ready.

Mr David said he wondered how the commission would allow people to suffer in an exercise done out of patriotism, and urged it to make things easy.

A student, Anita Sunday, who said she had done the online registration, said she was at the centre for physical capturing and the challenge was that one has to queue for the physical capturing, which could last the entire day.

“It took me a while to be captured because there was a long queue that seemed endless and if you are busy you will probably not have the patience to wait,” she said.

Evelyn Tumaka, who also applied for the registration online, said the failure to keep to the time fixed for the exercise was discouraging many people.

Reacting, Yakub Allawa, the Kuje INEC Electoral Officer (EO) said one of the major challenges the commission was facing was the issue of poor networks which had been slowing down the process.

Mr Allawa also revealed that decentralisation of the registration centre would also speed up the registration exercise and in extension decongest the population at the commission.

However, the electoral officer called on all major stakeholders, especially the traditional rulers and political party stewards to collaborate and synergies to make the registration exercise easy

He said that the commission was ready to make the exercise seamless if stakeholders would cooperate and assist in decentralising centres for easy access. 

(NAN