Continuous voters registration: INEC decries low turnout of women in Gombe

As the continuous voters registration exercise continue across the country, the Acting Administrative Secretary of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Gombe, Zakari Musa, has decried the low turnout of women in Gombe State.

Speaking in an interview with our Correspondent shortly after holding an interactive session with stakeholders in the State on developments during the exercise, the Admin Secretary stated that out of the 13,021 persons who have registered in the State, only 4,496 were women while 8,525 were men.

According to him, though the exercise was not for everybody, all those who had attained the age of 18 years since the last exercise, were expected to come out just as it was also expected that more women should have come out for the exercise considering their number based on recent population estimation.

Speaking on the challenges of the exercise which started since April 24th, Mr. Zakari said, “so far so good, but then, you will notice that we have some challenges, like people complaining about the distance they have to take to their centres from where they live. That is why INEC had to increase the number of centres.” Gombe State recently had an additional six centres to the twelve it had already.

He added that “There is also low turnout of women or the marginalized groups. You could notice that we made special request to the women through the representatives of women groups and other marginalized groups like the chairman of the joint association of people with disabilities. We had to use them to appeal to their people to come out. A number of them did not heed to our call on them to come out for the registration.”

Speaking on plans by INEC to improve the situation, the Admin Secretary said, “INEC has added a number of the registration centres, another one is to sustain the continuous voters registration exercise, we’ve started airing jingles on televisions and radios. This stakeholders forum is another one. We will also use the press, make announcements, all in an attempt to create awareness and call people to come out.”

“Most importantly”, he added, “INEC has improved the funding and other logistics arrangements for the next election, we will expect to have smooth operations in the registration centres.”

“We call on people concerned to come out and participate in the registration, but most importantly, we’ll tell them that this registration is not for everybody, whoever has registered during the last registration exercise needs not to register again.

“Those who have issues of transfers for example or their cards are missing, all they need to do is to approach our registration officials and notify them of their circumstance and INEC will guide them on what to do.

“For example, those who lost their cards apply for the replacement of these cards; those who have transferred will apply for the transfer of their centres to their new centres.

“We are hopeful that the chairman’s pledge of stepping down the registration centres to all the polling units before the 2019 general elections will come up on stream”.