Make Your Votes Count, a non-partisan grassroots-based project of the Youth Media & Communication Initiative (YMCI), is worried at the two weeks period (November 1 – November 14, 2010) mapped out for voter registration by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
Make Your Votes Count, a non-partisan grassroots-based project of the Youth Media & Communication Initiative (YMCI), is worried at the two weeks period (November 1 – November 14, 2010) mapped out for voter registration by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
We are concerned about how seventy million voters estimate of INEC can be registered in 2 weeks in over 120,000 polling units scattered in 774 Local Government Areas of the country. We are certainly not faulting INEC as it really appears they are pressed for time, but rather we are making a case for credible voters register that would be fair to all.
Two weeks will surely not be enough to cater for the estimated 70m people expected to register. We are talking about capturing the data of millions of people, in our kind of terrain and topography. One would have expected more time allotted for the registration of voters.
Again, we are impressing on INEC to work out a strategy to ensure that students in tertiary institutions who possibly will register in their various schools are able to vote during elections in January 2011. In the past we have always noted that students of tertiary schools register in their various schools to vote but are disenfranchised as their schools are closed and students sent off campus during elections.
We view this as unjust and call on INEC to immediately find a way out of this dilemma. All polling unit used for registration of voters must serve as voting polling unit on election day, to enable all registered willing voters to vote for their choice.
Uzodinma Nwaogbe
Director, MakeYourVotesCount
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