Existing Voters Who Registered Afresh Caused High Increase Of CVR In Osun

 

Kazeem Badmus

THE Resident Electoral Commissioner of Independent National Electoral Commission in the State of Osun, Mr. Olusegun Agbaje, has disclosed that some existing voters re-registered as fresh voters during the online Continuous Voters’ Registration.

According to Agbaje, the practice was responsible for the high figure recorded for the state during the online CVR.

The commissioner said, the commission discovered the anomaly during the physical verification exercise, explaining that some existing voters who lost their Permanent Voter Cards (PVC), damaged their cards or wanted to move their polling units to other places wrongly did fresh registration.

Agbaje made this known in a telephone interview with OSUN DEFENDER on Wednesday.

He said: “The turnover of people for the physical verification exercise has been quite impressive. You know it is not a fresh registration altogether. It is only for those who have just turned 18 years, those who have lost their PVCs, those who have damaged theirs and those who want to transfer from one place to another.

“Those who registered online have started coming for the physical verification, but we found out that many of them did it wrongly. Many of them had registered before. Instead of going to the portal where it will show them lost card, replace PVC or transfer, they were just doing fresh registration.

“When they came, we were able to know that they had registered before and this compounded our problems and unnecessarily inflated our registration figure. However, we have guided and advised on what to do.

“In the local governments that we have been to, INEC officials there are doing a very good job. The areas where we noticed some challenges, we asked those at the headquarters to come over and assist them so that they will not have any problem.

“We have been to Boripe, Boluwaduro, Ifedayo, Ila, Irepodun, Osogbo and Olorunda local government council areas and it was fairly reasonable.”

The commissioner urged those who have not registered to do so, while appealing to existing voters not to reregister again.

“I want to encourage those who have not registered before to do so and the ones that have registered before but have some challenges should not register again, as we have areas for them to rectify those challenges. We are ready for them and we have enough personnel, so they should not entertain any fear.”