Nigeria
begins registering millions for April polls
January
15, 2011 5:39:53 PM
* Estimated 70 million people
eligible to vote
* Previous polls marred by problems
with electoral roll
* Registration process to take two
weeks
By Samuel Tife
OTUOKE, Nigeria, Jan 15 (Reuters) -
Nigeria began the mammoth task of registering an estimated 70 million voters on
Saturday, a process which will be key to ensuring nationwide elections in April
are more credible than in the past.
An electoral roll riddled with
fictitious names and omitting legitimate voters, combined with ballot-stuffing
and intimidation, so badly marred previous votes in Africa's most populous
nation that observers refused to sign off on them.
President Goodluck Jonathan, who won
the ruling party nomination on Thursday, has said organising clean
presidential, parliamentary and state governorship elections in three months'
time is a top priority. An accurate electoral roll is key.
Jonathan named Attahiru Jega, a
respected academic, to head the Independent National Electoral Commission
(INEC) last June as part of efforts to clean up the system.
Jega said from the outset
establishing a new voter list so quickly in a country of 140 million would be
challenging.
"Nigerians need to understand
what we have started today is such a massive exercise the like of which I don't
recall in terms of scale and complexity," Jega told reporters in
Jonathan's home village, shortly after the president registered.
"We're working in 120,000
polling stations nationwide. We have to deploy men and materials to these
places and we have to ensure the process commences on time."
Crowds of villagers and Jonathan's
supporters flocked to his village of Otuoke to see him and his wife Patience
register under a makeshift canopy outside their country home.
Schools have been closed until the
end of the month and are to be used as registration centres during the two-week
exercise.
INEC last year bought 120,000
electronic voter registration kits -- including laptop computers, finger print
scanners, cameras and printers -- using part of a controversial 88 billion naira
($585 million) budget.
Jega said around 98,000 of the kits
had been deployed and acknowledged there had been logistical problems,
including with some of the scanners. He said he hoped the remainder would be
deployed in the next 24 hours.
"I want to ask Nigerians to be
patient with us ... We are only 5 hours into the first day of a 15-day
exercise," he said.
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