The leadership of both main political parties, the National Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic Party, has called on the Electoral Commission to address issues on long queues at the registration centers at its district offices in the ongoing limited registration exercise.
The Deputy General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress, Mustapha Gbande called on the Electoral Commission to improve its handling of traffic at the registration centers at its district offices. He expressed his dissatisfaction at the Electoral Commission’s withdrawal of machines even while traffic is high at the registration centers.
“What is very surprising is that EC has decided to withdraw some hands and machines despite the continuous long queues and long traffic that we have as far as the registration is concerned. That is the only challenge that we have now. One would have expected that as much as the queues remain very long and the traffic remain very high because of the numbers, we will rather add more machines to speed up the process but rather the EC is rather withdrawing machines that are supposed to be augmenting the workforce and that is the difficulty we have in understanding the rationale behind EC’s action to withdraw the machines.”
Mustapha Gbande
He also stated that, the exercise had seen some operational challenges which include poor network receptions and access to electricity particularly in the Oti region.
“So far so good. Used to the situation now. Since EC refuse to do anything about it there are place we still record challenges operationally in terms of network challenges and then also electricity particularly in Oti region.”
Mustapha Gbande
Additionally, he called for an extension of the date to make room for persons in the queues to get registered before the end of the process.
“Well the obvious thing to do or we expect is an extension of date to enable the queues to recede. Once people are in queues and they have travelled far away to come to the district capitals, the reasonable thing is to get them registered. So we expect a preparation to extend and to what date are we expecting this extension so that we can cover up at least the people who have shown interest and are in the queues so far. That is what we expect from electoral commission going forward.”
Mustapha Gbande
Joining his call, the Deputy General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party, Professor Haruna Mohammed, also entreated the Electoral Commission to work on the long queues at the registration centers following the party’s internal review of the limited registration exercise.
He indicated that his party has also observed the long queues and traffic that have slowed the process.
“NPP has followed the process of the limited registration as started by the electoral commission. We have made some observations as the registration exercise went on. We have had a review of our own meeting with respect to that particular registration. The last part of this registration is something we have given much attention to.”
“The numbers that have come out are very encouraging but we need to do more on mobilization to get people out to come and register. We have also observed some the difficulties in some of the machines, the long queues, and the distance that the people come from and the cost involved. All these are matters we have all observed.”
Haruna Mohammed
He also made a passionate appeal to the electoral commission to increase the number of registration machines to deal with the traffic.
“We have also observed that there more people coming that are coming out for this particular exercises and the machines that are used for the registration are few in most of the instances. So we call on the electoral commission to add more machines to the centers to be able to cover the rest of the people who are interested to exercise their rights to register.”
Haruna Mohammed
The ongoing limited registration exercise, which started on Tuesday, 12th September, 2023 is scheduled to end on Monday, 2nd October, 2023.
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