By Helen Ovbiagele, Woman Editor

Experts in human behaviour tell us that to make good progress in life, we use yesterday’s experience to improve our today and the future.

This year’s voter registration is over, and hopefully, despite the flaws, the pains and the disappointments, the extension must have enabled many citizens to register to vote next month.

The important thing now is for us to be humble enough to accept that there were problems. Problems of things which we should have done, but which we didn’t do; and problems of the things we did, which should have been done differently to ensure a smooth registration.  All this is very normal anywhere in the world.

You can never achieve 100 per cent success in it, and you can’t please everybody. This is why we should learn from the hitches and mistakes, and use them to ensure that voting during the elections will be as hitch-free as possible.

Heading the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC),  is never easy in this country.  It is a very stressful job which brings more knocks at the end of the day than kudos.  With the exception of the late Justice Ephraim Akpata, other INEC heads in recent years have come up for bashing for one thing or the other after elections. Understandably, some came off worse than some others.

To get a first hand feel of the registration, I went to several centres in the area where I live to see what was going on, before I decided which centre was more convenient for me to register in.  The first thing I noticed was how polite the youth corps members who were manning the centres were.

I’m sure their training must have included anger management and courtesy.  When the machines were malfunctioning, they remained calm.  When  some people exhibited anger and impatience at long delays, they remained calm, in spite of the frustration and tiredness on their own faces.  Some of them were naive, yes!  At the first centre that I visited, they ran out of printing ink at a point.

One of the youth corps members  announced this to the crowd, saying they couldn’t continue that aspect of  the exercise for that day, unless a member of the public could go purchase ink for them to use. You could imagine the uproar this caused as people asked why we should purchase ink for INEC after the billions of naira they had collected from the government, and also their demand for more money.  The youth  corps member didn’t argue with the crowd, rather, she said people could come collect their cards the next day when they would have got ink.  The crowd’s anger died down immediately.

One is entitled to ask why a registration centre should run out of printing ink. Shouldn’t there be a supervisor who goes round several times a day  to ensure that the centres in his/her area are well-equipped with the relevant materials?

I hope we are not going to be told that there was no provision for supervisors, or, no official bus for them to use. I noticed that the registration officers always came late; coming to meet long queues.  There seem to be no set time for them to resume duty. Could it be that there were no transport points at which INEC vehicles could pick them?

Early transport should be supplied them so that they get early to the centres.

This way, officers would get to the centres well before eight o’clock, set up and try out their equipment before people start arriving to register. This would make the exercise less strenuous for all concerned and we wouldn’t have long queues that discourage people.

The local government should have at its headquarters, on a large notice board which is accessible to the public, the list and addresses of registration/voting centres, since we are told we are to go vote where we registered.  Thus, at a glance you would know the number of  centres in a local government area, and choose the one most convenient for you. These centres should bear numbers, so that if yours moves to another location, you would be able to trace it.  The centre where I registered, moved three times. The first day I went there, it was in a shop’s doorway.  Thank God for the priority given to mature citizens, (which I had to ask for), I was attended to promptly and told to come for the card the next day.

For the next two days, the centre was nowhere to be found. When I enquired, I was told that the shop- keeper wanted her space back, so they relocated elsewhere to a roadside which they had been allocated in the first place.  At their allocated spot,  I was told they had come that morning, but had left for the day.  The time was 11.48 am.  Two days later, I found them on the other side of the road in another shop’s doorway. They explained that they were allocated a roadside, but they had to move constantly in search of a shade, so they could escape the scorching sun.

INEC officials should secure venues which are conducive health-wise for the officers and members of the public, and opening and closing times, should be displayed on the board showing the number of that registration/voting  centre.  Public fields and school premises where you can have several centres, are the best as there won’t be the risk of queues interrupting the flow of traffic on the road. There should be canopies for the officials.

At the beginning of the exercises, I saw a police officer  at each registration centre in my area.  But they disappeared or were withdrawn before the end of the first week.  We need them for crowd control.
All these points listed above are vital for the voting too.

First and foremost, lists of voting centres should be displayed on local government premises and their Information Units should inform the people, using town criers/loud speakers.  We should know opening and closing times, and the officers given adequate transport, so they can arrive on time with all the materials they need for the exercise.  There should be supervisors assigned to the various venues to ensure there is no shortage of voting materials.

There should be tight security at the venues and while conveying the boxes away.   We should be ashamed if at this level of our enlightenment and development as the ‘’giant of Africa’‘, ballot boxes still disappear  en route the counting centres, and voting is still marked by violence.

Mode of voting should be displayed properly, and the less time people spend at the polling stations, the better. People should be urged to leave after casting their votes.

I hope provision has been made for all cases concerning results to be disposed of before winners are sworn in.   There should be a deadline for court cases concerning election results.  It is ridiculous that people declared winners are uprooted later and declared ‘illegal occupants’ by the courts.

We should get everything sorted out well before anyone is sworn into office, and cases should not be entertained after that.