Since the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) requested assistance from all Nigerians in cleaning up the voters’ register, many ideas and steps on how to proceed have surfaced on social and traditional media platforms.
One thing to keep in mind is the Labour Party’s advice on how to present your claims and objections. A major step to cleaning up the voters register.
The cleaning up of the register only became a serious issue after pictures of children from the northern part of Nigeria who are as young as 10 claiming to be 18 resurfaced on social media. It had appeared that they were either granted Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) or properly registered to be given their PVCs, which should enable them to cast their votes in the coming 2023 general election.
This is an offence that violates the country’s electoral laws and has the potential to negatively influence the outcome of the 2023 general election.
Festus Okoye, INEC Commissioner of Voters Education, pleaded with Nigerians earlier this week on Channels TV Politics Today to help sanitise the process so that the outcome can be seen as fair, free, and credible.
Read also: Underage voters: INEC solicits Nigerians help in cleaning up voters’ register
He insisted that the collective will power of Nigerians and the electoral umpire can produce an electoral process devoid of any systematic manipulation often used by some unscrupulous politicians to influence the outcome of an election in their favour.
The Labour Party, which has been in the front line of the charge to give Nigerians a credible election, has drawn up the steps to help Nigerians identify and report cases of underage voters.
On Twitter, FS Yusuf (@FS_Yusuf) a prominent member of the Peter Obi/Yusuf Datti presidential campaign organisation, outlined the steps to take when attempting to make your claims and objections.
In his video message, which has already generated 3,223 retweets, 4,186 likes, and 89 quotes as of the time of writing, said that he wanted all concerned citizens to start the clean-up process in their polling units.
“To do that, I will give you a breakdown of the procedure to follow for you to raise an objection on a particular discrepancy that you might have noticed,” he said.
STEP TO TAKE
“First, you go to the INEC website and log in with your details, and the next page that will be displayed is the page for you to see the voters’ register.
“Then you click on the Voters’ Register, and a form will be displayed for you to fill up your polling unit information.
“You will be expected to put in your state, ward, polling unit, and other necessary information,” he added.
However, BusinessDay learned that for you to carry out this task, you first have to be registered with the commission. You do this by filling in your relevant information and clicking the link sent to your email address to be successfully registered.
“So, after filling out that information, the list of registered voters in your polling unit will be displayed,” he continued, pleading with any concerned Nigerians who have volunteered to help clean up the voter register.
He urged all to patiently check for any discrepancies, especially underage voters, and also the duplication of voter information.
“So, click on any of these that you may have discovered,” he said. “When you click on raising an objection, you will be taken to a new page. And this page will require you to fill in your information. The information required from you on this page will be the registration stage for your PVC as well as your VIN (Voter Identification Number) number.”
Yusuf pleaded that your VIN number be kept somewhere safe. “So after filling up that information, the next page that will be displayed is the information of the voter that you are raising an objection about.
“Once that is displayed, please take a phone and take a picture of the information of that voter displayed because you will be required to upload that captured data on the next page,” he added.
“After then, you will be taken to the next stage, where you will tick some boxes to agree with some terms and conditions and also upload that captured image.
“After which you successfully upload it and submit it,” he said.
However, he advised that a screenshot of all the queries be kept and that it would be necessary to vet in the future if INEC had treated the objections raised-an important step in determining if it is treated before the general election.
A few hours ago, Yusuf posted a picture detailing the steps to follow for those who couldn’t watch his video.
