ABUJA — Severe technical failures and staff laxity at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Headquarters in Abuja have sparked intense outrage among citizens attempting to register for their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).
On Thursday, scores of applicants who arrived at the headquarters in the early morning hours were left stranded after commission officials reportedly resumed duties as late as 11:00 AM, only to announce that the registration servers were offline [DZW9KT0ooVB].
Disgruntled citizens, many of whom disclosed they had abandoned their daily businesses and corporate jobs to fulfill their civic obligations, expressed deep bitterness over the lack of professionalism. According to witnesses at the scene, no applicant could be captured or processed due to the ongoing network blackout [DZW9KT0ooVB].
“This is completely unacceptable. People have been queuing here since 7:00 AM,” an aggrieved applicant stated. “For officials to stroll in by 11:00 AM and casually declare that the server is down is the height of frustration [DZW9KT0ooVB]. This is my third consecutive day returning here, and not a single person has been attended to.” [DZW9KT0ooVB]
The incident follows a wave of similar complaints across various registration centres in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), where applicants claim to have faced persistent data infrastructure failures and missing voter records [gDJ29s_997E].
While INEC has previously attributed portal issues to technical glitches, stakeholders and civil groups are calling on the commission’s leadership to urgently upgrade its server capacity and enforce strict discipline regarding staff resumption hours to prevent the systematic disenfranchisement of voters.
