Mr Rotimi Abiru, a member of the Lagos State House of Assembly, has advised INEC to improve on the voter registration exercise conducted in the country.
Abiru, representing Shomolu Constituency 2, gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) after he had voted at this Gbagada Ward, G PU030 during Saturday’s by-elections.
He said since the law permitted citizens that had attained 18 years to vote, then they would be disenfranchised if the exercise was conducted only every four years.
The Assemblyman said the commission should conduct voter registration every year instead of the four years exercise to allow citizens that had attained voting age to vote.
“INEC should step up the game in the area of voter registration. The process should be improved upon as it should not be a four-year periodic exercise.
“Although, it is understandable if the election is two, three or six months to the election such as the by-election.
“But for INEC to be updating voter registration every three or four years is quite unfortunate because voters attain 18 years every year.
“This means that people that have attained voting age should have the right to register without disfranchising them,” he said.
Abiru said there were different applications that could be deployed through the help of bank verification number (BVN) to update citizens that had attained 18 years.
HEe said the commission had tried in the area of conducting peaceful elections, adding that there was tremendous improvement in the provision of logistics and sensitive materials to the polling units.
He said: “So far so good, it has been quite peaceful and the conduct of the election is free and fair because there is no tension.
“However, the only thing we are experiencing is voter apathy because in some places some electorate refused to participate,” he added. (NAN)
