By Emma Arubi
The Igba of Warri Kingdom, Chief Rita Lori-Ogbebor, Tuesday, stormed the office of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Warri, Delta State, decrying the presence of huge crowd and slow pace of registration that is making it difficult for her people to register in the ongoing registration exercise.
The Octogenarian and activist cum hospitality guru in Nigeria said she decided to go to the office to see things for herself and lamented the frustration being encountered by her people and other Nigerians.
The maverick social crusader who spoke to journalists after spending about four hours at the INEC office to ensure that the exercise was seamless blamed leadership failure for the slow pace of work and inadequate capturing machines for the exercise and appealed to the relevant authorities to make more machines available to the Warri INEC office to facilitate the smooth execution of the exercise to enable every qualified person to get registered.
She therefore appealed for extension of the exercise, stressing that June 30th deadline will not be enough to register all those that needed to be registered.
According to her, “I decided to come to the INEC office because, first, with my age it is sad to see a lot of things go wrong in my country. I have no other country to call my own. Good or bad, until my dying day I will always do my best.
“So I came down from Abuja to devote this week to making sure that as the Igba of Warri Kingdom, everybody in Warri no matter your tribe or where you come from is registered.
“I am glad that you journalists came here with me. When we first came the whole place was crowded and jam-packed and it was frightening.
“But the Electoral Officer explained why the crowd was so much and we put our heads together and did some reorganization that aided the registration process.
“We discovered that there were people who don’t have cards, some have cards but want to change there voting point, some have cards but want to play some pranks, while some have lost their cards. After the reorganization the place was decongested and people left looking happy”.
Speaking on the visitation of the prominent Warri Chief, the Electoral Officer, Warri South Local Government Area, Mr Kingsley Ogboe, explained that some of the people that came for the exercise were misinformed by the politicians who told them that their voters cards have expired, pointing out that the voters cards do not expires.
He further expressed dissatisfaction that there were over twenty thousand Permanent Voters Card, PVCs, waiting to be collected in their office, adding that it was disheartening that people waited till the last minute before coming to register and collect their Permanent Voters Card even as he added that some people
just come to the office to cause mischief.
He however conceded that they have only just four (4) machines and it’s not adequate to cater for the large number of people of Warri South.
