By Francis Ezediuno
Even as the State Government of Osun declared Monday April 16, 2018 as public holiday so that eligible voters could register in the ongoing Continuous Voters Registration [CVR], complaints and commendations have continued to trail the exercise.
For those who complained, their grouse was that they were being disenfranchised because there were not enough voter registration centres and where such existed, they had to travel long distances to get themselves ready in order to exercise their civic duties.
They revealed that because of the lack of enough centres, mammoth crowds turned up at the available centres and they could not be attended to until late in the afternoon.
According to a voter residing in Esa-Oke, Mr. Gbenga Adeola, “I was at the centre this morning to register for the new voters’ card with my wife but could not be attended to due to large turnout of people for the exercise.
“This afternoon, I repeated my visit only to discover that those who have been coming for the past three days are yet to register”.
He said that with this situation, about 70% of residents of the town have been technically disenfranchised.
Corroborating, Abodunde Olaniyi stated that majority of the people could not register because of the unavailability of registration centres while others complained that in towns like Iloko-Ijesa, there is no CVR centre at all.
Meanwhile, some residents of Osogbo and Olorunda local governments who turned up at the CVR centres expressed their satisfaction with the exercise and praised the state government for giving the exercise the needed publicity and prayed that the maturity with which the electorates have been handling the exercise was going to be translated during the Gubernatorial and General Election in 2018 and 2019.
Even as the exercise came to a close at the end of the day, mixed reactions however followed it as many residents in the state complained that there were not enough centres in their vicinity and thereby demanding for centres to be located in each ward during future exercises while others expressed satisfaction at the opportunity given for them to have a work free day in order to take part in the continous voter registration exercise.
