Some youths on Wednesday staged a peaceful walk to INEC headquarters in Lagos to demand more voter enrollment machines.

The youths, under a political group, Youths In Politics (YIP), which arrived at the INEC office at Sabo-Yaba around noon, complained that the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) was taking time from applicants at various local government areas of the state due to long queues.

Speaking with journalists, the group’s president, Micheal Nwabufo, said the exercise was strenuous and time-consuming in most areas, hence the need for the electoral umpire to ease the process by taking the machines closer to the people.

“Sometimes, if you go to the INEC office in a local government area, you will see only two machines, and you see over 1000 people seeking to register. It doesn’t make sense.

“There isn’t enough machines. We are not pleased. INEC should take necessary steps to make sure that people get registered and get PVCs.”

Responding, Olusegun Agbaje, the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner in Lagos, said the state had the highest enrollment machines in the country.

“There is no local government area in the state that we do not have at least seven machines. In Alimosho, we have 12, in Eti Osa, we have 10 and so on, depending on the population of the local government.

“We have about 170 machines in the entire Lagos state. So, we have sufficient machines to capture people that are ready to get captured. The machines we have in Lagos is the largest we have in Nigeria.

“We will continue to do what we can do to ensure that we are able to register as many Nigerians as possible before the end of the exercise,” Mr Agbaje said.

The INEC boss, who noted that the crowd had reduced because of the extension, explained that the youth group was also surprised to get to the INEC office and see empty seats.

(NAN)