Five weeks into the ongoing Continuous Voters Registration, CVR, being conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, apathy has apparently continued to trail the exercise in the South-East and South-South geo-political zones.

Analysis of data published by the INEC showed that in 35 days the South-East recorded 76,493 online pre-registrations and 22,991 physical registrations. The South-South had 280,904 online pre-registrations and 27,690 physical registrations.

The figures drawn from 10 states of both zones are less than the 578,904 online pre-registrations and 83,284 physical registrations recorded by Osun State, one of six states of the South-West.

Lack of faith in the electoral process, inadequate information and publicity, cumbersome process, lack of confidence in INEC, and poor mobilization among others were fingered as being responsible for apathy in the South-East, South-South and some parts of the country.

According to INEC, online pre-registration covered September 15 to 21 while physical registration covered September 15 to 19.

Currently, the electoral commission said online pre-registration had been suspended in Anambra State until after the November 8 governorship election, in line with Section 9 (6) of the Electoral Act 2002. So, there is no data for Anambra State.

Among the states, while Osun is leading, Enugu is trailing, recording a miserly 2,931 online pre-registrations and 426 physical registrations.

The 10 top performing states are Osun, Borno, Lagos, Ogun, Kebbi, Kaduna, Kogi, FCT, Kano and Oyo.

The 10 trailing states are Enugu, Abia, Ebonyi, Plateau, Rivers, Cross River, Benue, Edo, Adamawa, and Niger.

So far, the South-West zone is leading after recording 1,640,685 online registrations and 158,627 physical registrants. It is followed by the North-West, 1,322,747(online) and 68,733 (physical).

The North-East has 99,312(online) and 52,646 (physical) registrants; and North-Central follows with 875,948(online) and 61,209(physical) registrations.

Broken down further, Southern Nigeria (1,998,082) trails the North(3,190,007) in online registration but has the upper hand in physical registration. In five weeks, the South had 209,308 compared to the North?s 182,588 physical registrants.

Worried by the trend, President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, Senator John Azuta-Mbata, last week, urged Ndigbo to take the voters registration seriously.

Don?t be complacent ? ACF

Speaking in like manner, National Publicity Secretary of the Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, yesterday, urged Nigerians to go out and register. He said: ?ACF is in support. It is an integral part of the democratic process. No eligible citizen should be complacent about it.?

Waiting for last minutes, mistrust responsible for apathy? Afenifere

When contacted, the National Publicity Secretary of the Pan-Yoruba Socio-Political Group, Afenifere, Jare Ajayi, said that seeming apathy on the part of potential voting registrants could be attributed to one of the characteristics of typical Nigerians on a thing of this nature.

He said: ?As is notoriously known, most Nigerians often wait until the deadline of an exercise of this nature. Experiences in the past showed that people will be rushing to exercise their civic obligations when the matter is drawing to an end. This is why some elements of stampede usually creep in as many would then be rushing to be attended to.?

Ajayi added that the gap (in form of mistrust) that has been created between the people and government over the years contributes to the lack of enthusiasm on the part of the potential registrants.?

On what should be done to have more people register, Ajayi called on the electoral commission, National Orientation Agency, Ministries of Information and other agencies responsible for enlightening the public ?to go all out? and let the people know the importance of getting registered.

INEC should make exercise less cumbersome ? PANDEF

On its part, the Pan Niger Delta Forum, PANDEF, yesterday, insisted that the people of the South-South know the import of the ongoing voters? registration and dismissed the claim of apathy in the South-South.

Rather, PANDEF through its National Publicity Secretary, Chief Obiuwevbi Ominimini, called on INEC to make the exercise less cumbersome for the people in the wake of the present economic hardship by taking the registration exercise closer to the people.

?There is no voter apathy to the exercise in the South-South geo-political zone. Our people are politically conscious and alert and want to participate in the electoral process. However it costs a lot of money under the present economic hardship for people to travel from their units, community and wards to the Local Government councils? INEC offices to register. So, what we want INEC to do is to take the registration to the various units where the people can trek to and register,? he said.

Why we are not interested in INEC?s CRV- South-East residents

A cross section of people spoken to in the South-East zone gave various reasons they were not interested in the ongoing continuous voters registration exercise.

It?s because people?s votes no longer count ? ex-administrator

A community leader and former administrator of Isi-Uzo development centre in Enugu State, Chief Charles Okwor, said people in the South-East are not turning up for the CVR because of loss of confidence in the ultimate end of the electoral process.

?The reason people are not turning out for the continuous voter registration is because people are disenchanted. There is apathy, when people?s votes don?t count, how do you expect people to come and re-register for voting again when at the end of the day what they voted for will not be announced?

?The people they did not vote for will be announced. At the end of the day, the politicians will go to the court and the courts are being presided over by the politicians. Most of the judges in the courts are being bribed. So it is the courts that now decide who becomes the leader.?

I don?t believe my vote matters ? School leaver

A school leaver in Owerri, Imo State, Ifeanyi Onyewuenyi, said he doesn?t believe his vote will make any difference in the outcome of elections.

Onyewuenyi insinuated that the outcome of elections in Nigeria are predetermined. He cited the 2023 elections and other previous ones, claiming that they were not based on people?s votes.

?I don?t want to waste my time to go queue up and vote, and at the end they will announce what they like. People suffered in 2023 and even other elections but were disappointed. I am not voting. They already know who will win,? he stated.

I?m not aware registration is on ? Driver

A commercial bus driver, Mr. Peter Amadi said he would have asked his daughter to go and register but added that he wasn?t aware of any voter registration exercise.

Amadi sought to know if the exercise was still on, in order to instruct his daughter to go register.

He maintained that three of his four children have permanent voter?s cards, except the last one, who just turned 18 years old.

INEC should set up ward registration centres ? Obingwa residents

Residents of communities in Agalaba Ward in Obingwa council area, Abia State, urged the INEC to set up registration centres in the five wards of the area. ?INEC should set up registration centres at the wards or polling units. This will make it easier for us to register or replace our damaged PVCs. It costs about N5,000 transportation fare from any part of Agalaba constituency to the local government headquarters at Mgboko. So, where can we get money to undertake such expenses in these hard times??

My job is not giving me a chance to register ? Abia voter

Some eligible voters in Abia State who are yet to register for their voter?s card blamed it on the busy nature of their jobs.

One of them, a driver told Vanguard in Umuahia that he was so engrossed with his job that he did not have time to go for capture.

The voter who pleaded for anonymity said he drives a government official and does not have the chance to go for capture.

The middle-aged man from Ohafia who resides in Ubakala in Umuahia South Local Government Area, however, promised to go for capture before the end of October.

South-East voting power will guarantee Nigerian president of Igbo extraction ? Oji

A Professor of Political Science at the Enugu State University of Science and Technology, ESUT, Okey Oji, said that only reasonable voting power will guarantee Nigerian President of Igbo extraction and urged the people of the region to go and register.

Prof. Oji, who is also a member of ESUT Governing Council, while calling on South Easterners to turn out en masse and participate in the ongoing voters registration exercise, said that South East cannot be yearning for a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction if they don?t have the voting power, adding that ?the majority always wins in democratic systems.?

Although he blamed the registration apathy on lack of trust in the Nigerian electoral system, he stated that the lapses in the system can be stopped with continuous active participation of the people in the electoral processes.

Nigerian politics is bastardized ? Ekwa

A resident of Enugu State, Emmanuel Ekwa, said that Nigerian politics has become so disillusioning that many Nigerians are no longer interested in participating in the CVR.

Ekwa attributes this apathy to loss of hope in political leaders and the system, and belief that votes do not count; citing the 2023 election where he believed Peter Obi was unfairly denied victory.

We have no confidence in INEC, votes don?t count ? Ebonyi residents

In Abakaliki, Ebonyi State capital, some residents said that they were yet to register due to insensitivity of leaders.

They said that votes don?t count again, and that bad governance and lack of leadership qualities by those elected into various positions militate against voter registration.

A welder, Mr. Agnus Nwobasi said he had the card before but misplaced it, saying he never wanted to obtain another card due to bad governance.

?I don?t have a voter?s card but I am not disturbed to get another one because the votes don?t count. Those we didn?t vote for in the 2023 elections were announced winners and they turned against the masses with hunger and suffering.?

Another resident Mrs. Anene Uduma said that the votes have already been counted in Nigeria.

?There is no need of stressing people for voter registration when after voting, the electoral umpire will announce a different result.?

Poor voter registration in Anambra

The recently conducted voter registration in Anambra which took place before the bye-election in the state?s South senatorial zone showed that 168,187 eligible voters participated. Of the number, 97,832 (58 per cent) were women, while 70,355 (42 per cent) were men.

Going by the number recorded in other states outside the region, the figure is very poor. Some people who spoke on the issue gave various reasons for the low turnout.

According to Mr. Okwuchukwu Ifezue, a trader at the Eke Awka market, most people in the South-East have lost hope in the electoral process and are no longer interested in voting during elections.

Another respondent, Mr. Nwali Chukwuemeka, an okada driver, who turned 18 years in January this year, said he is not interested in obtaining a voters card. Asked to explain the reason for his position, he said that older people who voted in the past were complaining of election manipulation, which is discouraging.

Inadequate publicity, voter education responsible for Voter apathy

Speaking with Vanguard, the Director of Programmes, Yiaga Africa, Cynthia Mbamalu, said the ongoing CVR exercise is experiencing apathy because of inadequate publicity and voter education across the country on different platforms and poor involvement of stakeholders.

Mbamalu said: ?I do believe that there is a lot that needs to be done with voter education and publicity around the ongoing continuous voter registration exercise, especially in mobilizing first-time voters, who are mainly the young people.

?A lot of them turned 18 post the 2023 general election. But the main thing is to invest a lot in publicity and leverage different media platforms, including social media platforms, which is where they spend most of their time, to encourage and inspire them to register.

?The second is to ensure that the process, especially the biometric capture, that the in-person registration is seamless.?

She further stated that, ?Part of the observations we had from Anambra CVR, which happened for this governorship election, was the fact that some of those centres were overcrowded, and the people just felt really, really stressed, and at the end, most of them did not conclude their registration.?

Nigerians lack trust in INEC, electoral process

Mbamalu also asserted: ?The other main issue is the general issue of trust. You have a lot of Nigerians still recovering from what they see as the outcome of, well, what you would call maybe their disappointment from the last election, and for the young people that followed that election, you have some of them who are questioning the importance if there is any value in registering, if the process will not be credible.

?So there?s a lot of work that needs to be done in inspiring confidence in the electoral process for INEC to also communicate to citizens what it?s doing to improve its processes, especially to rebuild trust with Nigerian youth.

Our recommendations to reduce voter apathy: compulsory electronic transmission of results

?The other part of it is electoral reform. Our electoral reform agenda will go a long way to build citizens, especially, young people?s trust in the process. Things like compulsory electronic transmission of results, has to be a salient point in this reform process, because a lot of young people love to see technology leveraging the election.

?So I think it?s a mix of all but most importantly, we need to keep mobilizing. During the publicity, INEC needs to work with the National Orientation Agency, NOA, with media partners.?

Political parties? investment in citizens? participation

The political parties need to also invest in mobilizing and getting citizens, because at the end, they are the ones people vote for. So just investing in that publicity and mobilizing citizens is key. But I think trust is a big issue. If people don?t trust the system, they will not see the need to register.

INEC needs independent appointments

?So we need to really work on our electoral reforms, get INEC more independent to the appointments. Maybe it?s important to add that the appointments of the new INEC chair cannot be politicized and partisan. We need a new appointment of the chair. Whomever is going to be appointed should be someone with unquestionable character and integrity, someone who has never been a member of a political party, someone with the requisite knowledge when it comes to elections, or experience in the elections, elections administration.

Element of distrust by Nigerian ? IPC

In another reaction, the Executive Director, International Press Centre, IPC, Mr. Lanre Arogundade, said basically it all boils down to distrust by Nigerians in the electoral process.

?There is the element of distrust in the electoral process as a whole; people have this feeling that whichever way you vote those who will win will win, so it?s kind of discouraging to some people.

?It also can be linked to some of the problems that arose after the last elections, which is one of the things we are doing as the European Union-funded Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria, EUSDGN, Programme, is to embark on building trust so that people can have trust and that is why we are calling for electoral reforms.

Politicians abandon electorates after elections

?The politicians after elections do not fulfill their campaign promises so because of that people see elections as a futile exercise and also ask: what will I gain from it. People just go to political rallies and campaigns mainly because of the money they will give them and other gifts.?

MBF speaks

The Middle Belt Forum, MBF blamed lack of confidence in the electoral process for the apathy. National President of MBF, Dr. Bitrus Pogu, called for reforms and blocking of election rigging to boost confidence of citizens. (Vanguard)

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