INEC registration:Umuahia Residents Decry Attitudes of INEC Officials

INEC registration:Umuahia residents decry attitudes of INEC officials
Less than 21 days the end of INEC Continuous Voters Registration Exercise, residents of Umuahia, the capital of Abia State are decrying the lackadaisical attitude of INEC officials as many who trooped out for the exercise were locked out without giving serious attention at the INEC office located at Adelabu Street.
A crowd of prospective registrants at INEC office, Adelabu Street Umuahia, complained bitterly of not being attended to, an action they described as a ploy to disenfranchise them ahead of the forthcoming general elections in 2023.
Some of the prospective registrants who spoke to journalists, including Sir Dennis Ike, Lukeman Aminu, Mrs. Favour Ukaegbu, Divineboom Chukwuemeka regretted how the INEC officials that have been calling on citizens to come to perform their civic duty are the same people denying them the opportunity to be captured in the exercise. They called on INEC to employ more hands for the smooth running of the exercise in order not to disenfranchise those who are willing to get registered
Reacting to the complaints, the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner for Abia State, Dr. Joseph Iloh blamed the upsurge in registration to the attitude of Nigerians who would always wait for the eleventh hour to identify with Government programmes such as INEC registration.
He however explained that INEC has mechanism for such upsurge noting that when such report gets to them through the their electoral officers, it has an Intervention Machine designed for handling cases where prospective registrants are more than the personnel handling them.
Dr. Iloh also disclosed that the INEC in Abia targets to register 3 million voters and appealed to all eligible voters to go to any centre nearest to them to be captured, informing that the INEC registration centres opens between 9am to 5pm on each work day.
Recall that INEC had extended registration deadline till 30thJune