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By Young E. Freeborn, Warri
A community leader in Unenurhie community, Ughelli North Local Government Area of Delta State, Evang Isaac Oriodofe, who is vice president general of the community, has once again gave a stern warning to politicians and those in the corridors of power in the country to desist from using political power to manipulate the on-going online voters registration across the country in their favour and personal political interest and at the detriment of the poor and vulnerable in the various communities in the country.
The community leader, who is also an active APC chieftain, gave the warning recently at his country home while fielding questions from journalists on the state of the nation and level of infrastructural development in his community under his leadership.
“This present online voters registration that is currently going on across the country is a national priority programme of the Federal Government and it’s under the watch and supervision of INEC. This is done from time to time to boost the population of voters in the country because as you know, according to the natural law of birth and death, when old ones are passing out, new ones are being recruited into the scene. In all, the essence of the voter’s registration is to boost the population of voters in the different polling units across the various constituencies or electoral wards in the country.”
Evang Oriodofe said that, “Unfortunately, this first phase of the online registration, from what I begin to see around this our electoral ward, politics is already creeping in to destroy the system that is meant to be fair and stable. Why am I saying this? In an electoral ward that is made up of different communities, six persons were called to go for training by INEC. I think as credible political leaders that want to enshrine equity, fairness and justice in the ward, they are supposed to share the six slots among the people. Instead of doing it this way, we now discovered that, the six slots were given to just one community in the ward, leaving the other one to her fate.”
The community leader noted that, “Today, we are suffering it since we have nobody to do the online registration for our people. If this online registration can be tempered with by the so-called political leaders of the ward because they are placed ahead of my community, what will then happen during the physical registration?
“This is why I’m begging them to remove politics from the national exercise. Doing this to my people is a way of disenfranchising them and reducing our population (on the ballot). It’s a deliberate act by these so-called political leaders in the ward. This is nothing but political oppression and marginalization to my community and my people. It’s injustice and infringement on our fundamental and civic rights as citizens of this country. I also want to appeal to the Federal Government to set in place a very strong monitoring network to checkmate some of the excesses of these dubious people.
“In whatever position or capacity you are holding in government today is to serve the people and not to serve your selfish political interest. It’s time to live above greed and avarice. Let fairness, equity and justice take the order of the day henceforth,” he said.
