By Magdalene Agbadamashi & Favour Ogegbene

The ongoing 2018 Permanent Voters Card (PVC) registration exercise which was initially slated to close on Friday, August 17th, and has been extended by the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) for another two weeks has caused eager and eligible voters who thronged the Warri South INEC office hours to the initial closing time a lot of headache.

GbaramatuVoice correspondent who visited the INEC office in Warri South constituency, gathered from the registrants who were present at the venue, that they have been waiting to be registered days, but to no avail.

They accused the INEC officials handling the registration exercise as being partial.

According to Mrs Elohor, one of the aggrieved eligible voters, “When I came here, that was around 12noon today. The man in charge told nursing women and pregnant women to come in gradually, but in the other way round we are seeing another thing. Because, while some people that have been here since 6am and some since yesterday are outside here, some that have connections, they will just drag them in.

“But we, without connection, we are still out here waiting since morning,” she lamented.

Others supported the account of Mrs Eholor. One of such persons was a lady who gave her name as Mrs Joy. 

She said: “It is only 45 people they have attended to since 5am. Since 7am I have been here. I and another pregnant woman were asked to come in, but then people started fighting and quarreling.

“So they asked us all to go out till 11am before they arranged the place and started calling us in again. And it is only one machine that is working fine. The other one is very slow.

“Some people have registered and gone but since I went inside and came out, it is same persons that have been here with me since morning that are still here now.”

GbaramatuVoice spoke with the Electoral Officer, Mr Chinedu Ezeh, about the allegations of bias ongoing in the registration exercise.

In his words, “The turn up has been much especially this late period that we are tidying up. 

“I don’t know what they have been doing all these while. There are four machines being used; two are working here, one is in the field and the last one is for backup. 

“The challenges we face here is that people are impatient; everybody wants to be registered at the same time.”

Continuing, he said, “People have their mouth; they can say whatever they want to say but the two machines here are working fine and any other thing they say is their opinion.”

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