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By Akpan David, Calabar
Potential voters have decried the inadequate supply of INEC data capturing machines to different wards in Cross River State.
They have therefore appealed for deployment if more machines to different wards to ease their suffering of having to travel long distances to register for next year’s election.
Some of the potential registrants spoke to Journalists yesterday in Akpabuyo LGA headquarters of the state.
One of them who said he missed the last registration due to ill health, 45 year old Cobham Ene from Esighi community said INEC should help the elderly ones in the hinterlands by having centres in local wards nearest to the people.
“There are very elderly citizens in distant communitiies who cannot travel long distances. So INEC should help them by creating closer registration centres and put necessary security measures, too, so that smarter politicians don’t manipulate the machines.”
Another potential registrant, Affiong Okon, said she came from a very far distance for the registration only to meet a very large crowd.
Chairman of Akpabuyo Local Government Area of Cross River State, Emmanuel Offiong Bassey appealed to the large crowd of registrants to be patient as he will take the issue up with INEC authorities.
He expressed unhappiness that there was only one DCM for the voters registration exercise in his council, saying it is grossly inadequate to take care of the local government.
Speaking at INEC office in Ikot Nakanda, Akpabuyo local government area when he visited the office to see how the exercise was being done in his local government area
He said: “I want to plead with INEC to send additional machines to Akpabuyo so as to get more people registered, especially now that we are entering election period, so that no legible voter would be disenfranchised”.
PRO of INEC in the state, Ikpeme Inyang assured that soon more machines would be sent to many wards but that the issue of security of the machines are paramount yet.
