INEC Registers 68,825 Voters, as first phase ends in Bayelsa

THE Administrative Secretary of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Bayelsa State, Mr Clement Oha has said that the first round of the ongoing Continuous Voters Registration exercise was impressive, as a total of 68,825 persons were successfully registered ahead of the 2019/2020 elections in the state.

Oha made the disclosure on Wednesday while briefing journalists at the state headquarters of the commission in Yenagoa.

He noted that the turnout of the people in the constitutionally recognized eight local government area was responsible for the success recorded in the predominantly riverine state.

He said additional 10 centres were created in the state during the first phase of the exercise, noting that the state office had yet to know if more centres would be created in the second phase billed to commence on July 31, 2017.

The INEC boss said Southern Ijaw Local Government Area recorded the highest number of 14,110 registrants while Brass LGA was the least with 2,724.

He clarified that the registration was in three categories: those that clocked 18, those who registered before but couldn’t find their names in the register of voters and those who for unknown reasons could not register.

Oha stated, ”The first phase of the national CVR ended on Thursday, July 20, 2017 and as at the final stage of the date, we had a total registered figure of 68,825 new registrants. We equally have those that transferred to Bayelsa State within and outside the state.

”The figure we have for those that transferred to Bayelsa State is about 1057.

”We are still undertaking consolidation and aggregation of data. By the time we finish the final collation of data, we will call for consolidation from all the local government areas and all the machines that we used, because during the process, we encountered some challenges.

”We had issues with some machines not responding as optimally as we expected. But with the support of the INEC headquarters, we were able to surmount all the challenges. We deployed adequate number of machines to cover all the centres in Bayelsa during the first phase.

”About the second phase, by the programme we got from Abuja, it is due to start on July 31, 2017. As I talk to you now, some of our staff from Abuja are at our ICT centre doing the consolidation and accreditation.

”By the time this is concluded, we are going to give you the final figure. It may go up or it may come down, but we don’t know because some of the machines had some challenges during the process and they have been working on them in the past few days to recover some of the lost data. But as of today, what we have is 68,825.”

To this end, he shared the optimism that the machines would be ready before the commencement of the second phase of the exercise.