The Voting Excercise within Garki Area 1, Area 2, Area 3, Area 7, Area 8, Area 10, Kabusa/ Galadimawa axis is going smooth so far.
Voters, Party Agents, Observers and supervisors on election duty were seen out as early as 7am walking to their various polling units with security presence visibly prominent.
However, most polling units experienced late arrival of INEC officials and Presiding Officers.
Accreditation began from 10:30 to 11am with no incidences reported. Special preference was given to the elderly, nursing mothers and pregnant women in all the polling units visited by Kukuruku News Team.
Kukuruku News Team also observed that the new polling units created to decongest voters and enhance the voting excercise were seen scanty.
Which presupposes that the decongestion excercise was not effective.
Some Polling Units had insufficient ink pads to facilitate a faster voting process
Speaking with six separate presiding officers at Area 1 section 2, Area 2 section 2 and some scanty polling units in Area 8, Kukuruku News was reliably informed that number of voters assigned to the new polling units were 2, 69, 9, 4 and in some places only 6 person’s respectively.
Out of these scanty numbers, not all voters had turned up for the excercise as at 1pm. The INEC adhoc staff, party agents and other officials were seen sitting idly and waiting.
Whereas, those congested polling units were still as congested within the same vicinity.
Area 1 section 2 Guest House polling unit had an uncontrollable and uncoordinated crowd who had torn out the accredited voters list of 2,803 voters, this made it difficult for those who arrived much later to trace and find their names. INEC adhoc staff and presiding officer Zakaria Musa expressed concerns over the incoordination and lamented about not being able to carry out their job seamlessly without sufficient presence of security agents to maintain peace and order.
All polling units within Galadimawa axis located inside various private and government estates experienced a high turn out of voters, a good number of security presence, individual supporters and volunteers among voters who were willing to help the INEC officials organise the voters, voting process and maintain the peace.
Mr. Agbazie Ifeanyichukwu Chairman of the city centre watch and Mr Chinedu Emenike who are accredited supervisors representing the Labour Party expressed their concern on INEC’s seeming unpreparedness for the elections due to the uneven number of voters assigned to separate polling units and insufficient voting materials such as inking materials, voting boxes and other irregularities being noticed by their team.
