By Praise Necherem
A Civil Society Organisation, YIAGA Africa, has expressed worry over slow pace of the ongoing Continuous Voters Registration, CVR, at various centers in Anambra State; attributing it to poor internet connectivity.
In a statement from its Program Officer, ‘YIAGA Africa’s Power of 18 Project’, Miss Chinemerem Onuorah made available to journalists in Awka, the group regretted the discouragement the problem was posing to electorate, especially those participating in the exercise for the first time and urged the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to fix the challenges.
Noting that the current registration challenges will have subsequent negative effects on voting in the November 6 election in the state, Miss Onuorah regretted that INEC servers were either down or too slow to efficiently register the number of people who visited the CVR centres daily.
According to her, “Recent CVR report by the electoral umpire indicated that 120,600 persons have completed their online and physical registration processes with Anambra state leading with a total of 8,624 complete registrants.
“This can be attributed to the diligence of the Anambra people, but also largely due to the efforts of the YIAGA Africa’s project in the state.
“One month into the project, these YIAGA Rockstars have testified to mobilising hundreds of first-time registrants among them through symposiums, lectures, townhall meetings and even football competitions for young people.”
Miss Onuorah highlighted other challenges encountered in the mobilisation drive to include lack of tech savvy, access to computers and internet to do their online registration.
“Many willing youths who visited the CVR centres to register could not conclude their registration due to internet problem. It takes a toll on our YIAGA Rockstars when they have to convince people to come back the following day to try completing their registration.
“Another challenge is that many Nigerians are not tech savvy, or have access to computers and the internet to do their online registration, when they go to CVR centres to register, they are turned back to go and do the online registration first.
“We recommend that INEC fixes the issue of slow internet, so that people who show up at the centre will not be discouraged from doing their registration.
“There should be a separate machine at the registration centres that can attend to people who did not complete the online registration, so that they can begin and conclude the process physically,” she said.
It would be recalled that in July, YIAGA, under its ‘#ThePOWERof18 project’, provided the sum of N2 million to support civic projects, targeted at training 10 young indigenes of the state, to mobilise first time voters to register and vote in the November 6 governorship election in the state.