As the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) set for Monday’s commencement of the Continuous Voters Registration (CVR) exercise, a socio-political organization, Ekiti in Diaspora Development Initiative (EDDI), has urged Ekiti indigenes to troop out en masse and register to be able to participate in future elections.
The Chairman of EDDI, Dr Oluwaseun Fadipe, in a statement made available to journalists in Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti-State capital, explained that INEC had announced that the continuous voter registration (CVR) would commence, on Monday, June 28, 2021, and be carried out continuously for over a year until the third quarter of 2022, across the country.
The statement further appealed to Ekiti people to take an interest, “in this crucial step by completing their INEC voter registration. This will have long-term impacts on who eventually gets elected into the different political offices during the 2022/2023 governorship and general elections.”
According to him, “Ekiti deserves the best political office holders in the next political dispensation, emphasizing that without a massive voter registration and voter turnout campaign, a small percentage of Ekiti citizens will continue to elect politicians who may not necessarily have the best interest of the state at heart.”
However, Fadipe said he was worried about INEC’s methodology to carry out the voter registration online while biometric verification would be conducted at designated centres with schedules for registrants.
“In a country like Nigeria with limited accessibility, affordability, and poor internet infrastructure, how many people, especially in the villages and suburbs, would have access to the internet and be able to carry out the first phase of the registration process before moving to the designated centres for biometric,” he queried?
He noted that measure if not properly handled would disenfranchise many residents of the state from registering during the exercise.
According to the EDDI’s Chairman, “regardless of the barriers put in place, EDDI is determined and will leave no stone unturned to ensure that all Ekiti eligible voters from 18 years of age and above have access to the needed information on how and where to exercise their civic responsibility and register to vote.
“Listen, EDDI was conceptualized to promote a just, fair, and politically-engaged Ekiti society, and we strongly believe that this INEC scheduled registration is at the core of our founding and our effort to clean the state off of selfish, greedy, and incompetent politicians who will never bring tangible developments to the state.
“Our goal is to activate Ekiti people to participate in the registration exercise, and we intend to leverage EDDI’s technical team of experts that cut across the field of information technology, business, process reengineering, and grassroots volunteers to ensure we are successful on this mission.”
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