Corps members disappointed us - INEC

As the voters' registration continued on its fumbling note into day three yesterday, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), attributed the inefficiency to low knowledge of the corps members who were deployed as registration officers. The Commission, while apologising to members of the public for the delay and general inadequacies attending the exercise across the federation, said 'we are sorry but we will continue to improve.'

Featuring on a political programme, 'Focus Nigeria', the INEC National Commissioner in charge of Publicity, Prince Solomon Soyebi, lamented that the commission was not happy with the development but explained that the commission took it for granted that the corps members would know the basic operations of a computer, a belief, he said, turned out to be misplaced.

'We assumed that these corps members should know how to operate a simple machine like the DDC machine in addition to the training they had but unfortunately, they disappointed us. We discovered they could not and many of them had to be battling with it unsuccessfully.

'These are graduates and we never expected it that any of them won't be able to handle a computer but the reality was such that majority of them couldn't and we had to shuffle them,' Soyebi added.

He also admitted that the upfront allowance the corps members were to be paid before the start of the exercise could not be paid due to tedious banking process, a development which also made the process of registration slow as many of them had nothing to eat during the exercise.

Soyebi, however, assured that the process would improve as the registration officers got used to the operation of the machines, adding that officials of the commission would be on hand to offer assistance to the registration officers to reduce the hiccups.

He also promised that the process of payment of the first installment of the corps members' allowances would be fast tracked while other logistics would also be looked into with a view to addressing all observed lapses.

Meanwhile, the INEC Chairman, Attahiru Jega, has urged the people to exercise patience with it saying the noticed initial inefficiencies would soon give way.    

He urged prospective voters to go to the nearest units to them, and wait patiently for their turn but could leave and come back if they experienced delay since the exercise would last for two weeks.

Jega who spoke in Abuja, however, called on voters not to wait till the tail end of the registration to avoid rush.