Eti-Osa LCDA Chair Accused Of Using Thugs To Disrupt Voter Education Exercise

Chairman of EtiOsa East LCDA, Honourable John Campos Ogundare stormed in company of his foot soldiers on Thursday disrupted a smooth Voter Sensitisation and Registration exercise , confiscating the workstations and arresting two of the Volunteers who were involved in the process.

This happened at Addo Primary school, Ajah, Lagos state.

According to eyewitnesses, the Chairman and his boys stormed the venue of the exercise, demanding how they got authorization to carry out such program in his jurisdiction without due permission from him and his boys went ahead to seize the laptops and printers the volunteers were using in helping people who were legible for voter registration to access the internet. Policemen were later brought in to detain the volunteers, who were released one hour after.

The group, Vote Your Conscience is a volunteer group whose big goal is to support the INEC’s CVR process by providing internet access to enable vulnerable citizens register on INECs e-voters registration website. The team, who were in their second day of activity were quite taken aback by the violent development.

The Lead of the group, Chukwuma ‘Chukky’ Ochonogor said he was surprised at the distasteful turn of events and how the LCDA Chairman and his ‘goons’ treated them like intruders. Recounting the ordeal, he said Hon Ogundare and his boys stormed the place creating a lot of noise and threw the printer they were using on the hard floor.

“They came and started arguing first, saying how can you do this kind of thing here without informing us. His goons came and threw the printer on the floor.The guys then took the laptops to the police station and policemen came with their guns to arrest the guys doing the registration but they were released one hour later.

“It is just surprising. This is supposed to be a non partisan exercise but going to the LCDA Chairman that you know is a member of a political party does not speak well. We started yesterday (Wednesday) and we already have about sixty people registered. They do not have access to the internet or phones and we voulunteered to bridge that gap”, he said when he spoke to a 774Nigeria News reporter.

He gave assurances that they will by no means stop in their good work of helping people access the INEC Voter registration portal by providing good internet and tools. The group help indigent people who have no device or internet data to do the registration, print out the slip and direct them to their closest INEC Registration centre for biometric capture.

“The initial plan was to cover the ten wards in Eti Osa LGA at the moment. We are only concentrating here for now because of limited resources and the plan is to devote two weeks for each ward.The people we are doing it for really appreciate it. The Inec office is far and takes like forty minutes to get there”, he explained.

“I am grateful that no one was hurt and we were allowed to carry out our work.”

Speaking on what motivated him to register this organisation and getting volunteers to join him on this journey ,he said

“It is really ENDSARS. I think it is abysmal that the number of people that actually vote is way less than 5% of the voting population. The people have the power and we want any one that wins elections to know that. For me, ENDSARS was the trigger point.”

“The initial catchment was the youth but as it is, we cannot turn anyone( eligible) back. It is about convenience. They do not have to buy data. Even though the initial plan was to attract younger people ,we are not turning anyone back. We really want to put power in the hands of people. Let them have the power to decide. It’s really disheartening when I see people go on twitter or WhatsApp to just talk. This is where the real power is. We can give someone red card at the end of four years and if another person comes again we give them red card until we get who we need. Tomorrow we continue our exercise”,he said with triumph.

Vote your Conscience is a volunteer-driven organisation helping legible voters in remote , inaccessible areas access the INEC CVR process by providing internet to enable vulnerable citizens register on in the ongoing e-voters registration on the portal,and they are undaunted in the face of threats of voter registration suppression.