The Coalition of South East Youth Leaders, (COSEYL), the apex socio-political youth group in the South East geopolitical zone has called on INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, to extend the voters card registration exercise to enable Nigerians who are eligible to vote to register.
The group in a statement by its President General, Goodluck Ibem, noted that since the exercise commenced, so many Nigerians could not register for their PVCs because of non availability of adequate equipments and computers for the registration exercise.
Ibem further pointed out that the situation was worst in the south east which he claimed had two computers per local government as aginst the north which registration centres were ubiquitous with verse machine for registration.
COSEYL recalling that it had it had earlier urged INEC to provide more equipment and multiple registration centres in south east said it was disappointed the commission did not grant its request till the exercise ended.
“But to our dismay, the Commission did not provide adequate materials and people in the South East and other Southern states were subjected to serious stress and difficulty to register for their PVCs.
“Alot of people paid exorbitant high transport fares to INEC offices in the South East local government offices but could not register for their PVCs after several months of trial because of large number of people who came for the exercise in the INEC offices.
Meanwhile, the youths have accused INEC of deliberate effort to disenfranchise people of the south east from participating in the next election.
“The 2022 voters registration exercise looks like a calculated attempt by the INEC Chairman Prof. Yakubu to deny the people of South East the opportunity of registering for their voters card by deliberately depriving the people of South East adequate equipments for the exercise.
“In the North, we are very aware that the INEC Chairman provided sufficient and adequate registration materials for the voters registration exercise even to the extent of establishing registration centers in Niger Republic which is a different country of her own.
“ It is heartbreaking that when the voters registration exercise started in the South East, a local government have only 2 computers each per loçal government and towards the end of June, they brought in only 2 computers to some local government in the zone which did not make any impact.” Ibem stated.