· INEC worries over low voters registration
Francis Sardauna in Katsina with agency report
The Chairman, Katsina State Traditional Council of Chiefs and Emir of Katsina, Dr. Abdulmumini Kabir Usman, has raised the alarm over what he described as multifaceted worsening security challenges besetting residents of the state.
In another development, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the state, expressed concern over poor turnout of residents registering for the Permanent Voter Card (PVC) in the newly established 1,750 polling units.
The traditional ruler said the worsening level of insecurity in the state was degenerating the state of affairs. According to him, it has negatively impacted the security of lives and property of the citizenry, particularly in the farming communities across the state.
This is even as the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in the state had berated President Muhammadu Buhari and the legislative arm of government over failure to investigate prevailing security challenges in the North-west despite huge resources spent to curb the scourge in the region.
Usman, who spoke in Hausa in a two minutes viral video, said some traditional rulers in the state have fortified their salaries to enable the state government to ward off banditry in the state but to no avail.
He added that the state has literally been overrun by terrorist-bandits, kidnappers, armed robbers, rapists, and other sundry armed criminal gangs who terrorise and kill, abduct and rape innocent citizens indiscriminately in the state.
He said: “You will see two or four persons (terrorists) on a bike with live ammunition out to kill anyone they could lay hands on, we all have to stand on our feet. It’s not as if we don’t have the money.
“We have the money and weapons to fight these people (terrorists). We have even fortified our salaries so that they can fight insurgency but they don’t. Many emirs have been abducted.
“It has gotten to the extent that everywhere you go, you will be in constant fear of not knowing what may happen. It was just yesterday that I came back from Kaduna, l had to be escorted front and back”.
He added that: “Imagine we and our country living in such fear because of those irresponsible drug addicts. We can tackle them, we have the money and weapons to fight them. Are we afraid of them?
“We can’t fold our hands and be killed and have our wives abducted and raped in our presence, it is not fair.”
Collaborating the Emir’s frustration, the Chairman of the Coalition of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in the state, AbdulRahman Abdullahi, said with the escalating security challenges in the North-west, the monarch had spoken the minds of his subjects.
He said the federal and state governments needed to devise more proactive and revolving security measures to tackle banditry and other heinous crimes orchestrated by the hoodlums than its current reactive actions.
“It is unfortunate that, despite huge spending on security operations in the North-west, the rate of crime is increasing by the day and neither the president nor the legislature cares to probe why,” he added.
However, INEC, speaking through its state’s Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Alhaji Jibril Zarewa, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Katsina.
He said one year after the commencement of PVC registration, there was a poor turnout of people for registration in the newly established polling units.
According to Zarewa, “In May 2022 when we did analysis, we realised out of the 1,750 newly established polling units, about 1,200 units did not have more than 50 people who registered in each of them.
“This registration involved transfers. Some of the polling units have zero registration, some have only one, and some five while some have not more than 50 people who registered.
“Although this can be attributed to the suspension of telecommunication networks in 17 of the 34 Local Government Areas (LGAs) for about five months due to the security problem.
“Since the resumption of the exercise in March, out of the 1,750 polling units created, about 1,200 don’t have up to 50 people that registered in each of them.
“We are appealing to the people of those areas where the new polling units were created to go and register, as INEC is always ready for them.
“The reasons for the creation of additional polling units is to serve the areas and decongest the congested polling units through the transfer of their polling units, ” he said.
He disclosed that initially there were 4,902 polling units in the state but with the creation of the additional ones, there are 6,652 polling units at present.
Zarewa explained that the collection of the PVCs is appreciable, saying towards the 2019 election, INEC had to stop the issuance of the PVCs.
“As at that time, we had about three per cent of our cards collected, which means out of the 3.230 million PVCs, we had, just about 50,000 were not collected.
“As of Jan. 12, 2022, we have taken 53,000 from the headquarters, and just a few days ago, we have taken an additional 20,000 for people who made corrections.”
