By JIMITOTA ONOYUME
PORT HARCOURT-INDEPENDENT National Electoral Commission, INEC, says it has so far registered about 1.4 million eligible voters in the ongoing voters registration exercise in River State.

The state Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mr Aniedi Ikoiwak, made this known, yesterday, in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, at roundtable session organised by the state chapter of the National Orientation Agency, NOA, in Port Harcourt.

According to the INEC boss, who spoke on The ongoing voter registration exercise: The challenges and the way forward, the Direct Data Capture machines would be distributed to areas that require more than the ones they already have to be able to speed up the registration process.

“Let me say this. This is the first time we are taking a near correct data of Nigerians. I know what happened in 2006. I know that certain persons took machines and captured Mike Tyson and all that.

“We should know that 80 percent of our registers, 80 percent of our records, including that of our population are full of ghost names. It is a fact that whenever election is subjected to one man, one vote, you don’t record up to 20 percent turn-out.

“We saw it in the governorship election in Anambra. Recently, there was a rerun election in Delta, voters who turned out were not up to 20 percent,” he said.