Published 26th Feb, 2023

By Joseph Adeiye

Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) ad hoc staff on Saturday disenfranchised some voters in Ara Junction, Agric Road in Igando, Lagos, after they waited for about seven hours.

Elizabeth Mide, a disenfranchised voter, told FIJ that INEC staff arrived very late, refused to allow all voters exercise their right to vote and failed to complete the voting process at the polling unit.

“The voter register they pasted included close to 3,000 people’s details. The people that were at the polling unit, I’m trying to call an average, were about 1,000. People who voted were less than 300. The ballot box was not even half full,” Mide told FIJ on Saturday.

“The INEC staff came late. When I got there around after 9, they were just pasting the registers. The first person voted at 10:43 am.

“We had such a crowd in the polling unit and we only had one polling officer, two assistant polling officers and two police officers. When the place became so rowdy, they were overwhelmed by the crowd and two more officers came.

“They were trying to manage the crowd. Some voters used the claim to be aged to take up space and time, just to vote.”

Mide told this reporter that she had looked forward to casting her vote on Saturday.

According to Mide, such a poorly planned process could discourage voters like herself from voting next time.

“Then their SPO (Supervising Polling Officer) came. She was not putting on a tag or any identification, but they said that she was their SPO. She told us that voting would end at 2:30 pm. This was around 11:30 am or so.

“The voters voiced their discontent with this and she later said that, so long as people were on the queue, they would be allowed to vote. Again, they said that they would stop by 5 pm. Around after four, I was still at the back of the queue with about 20 people in front of me, so I didn’t really know what was happening in front. People just suddenly started shouting: “we must vote, we must vote!”

“The presiding officer, a corps member, had packed his bag. Two police officers were guarding the ballot boxes, while the other two were trying to control the crowd. But at that point, the place was already rowdy. People didn’t want to listen, they just wanted to vote.

“The white bus that had brought the INEC staff in the morning drove past the polling unit to get to another polling unit. When the bus returned, the INEC staff simply lifted the ballot boxes and other materials into the bus. They left with the bus. The SPO was left with us and she initially said that they would count the votes at the polling unit.

“I don’t know how everything changed so suddenly. Two minivans came to take the SPO and the party agents. There’s a police station close by. They said that they were going to count the votes there with the party agents only. I just had to return home without casting my vote.”

INEC prescribes that polling officials start the accreditation process at 8:30 am. Voters would cast their votes immediately after accreditation. Also INEC’s voting procedure aloows extension of voting time as long as all voters were already in the queue by
2:30pm.

The accreditation and voting process at Mide’s polling unit suffered great setback because it was understaffed.

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