“We are not computer illiterate; the machines are not working because the products are bad. We were taught how to go about the handling of the machines and it is a very simple process.
You don’t have to be literate in computer to know how to do it. Even a lay man on the street can also operate it if you go through the learning process. It’s just that the machines are not good product.”
These were the words of some corps members when Daily Sun went round some registration centres in the Federal Capital Territory.
They confirmed to Daily Sun that they were made to go through some lessons on how to operate the machines before commencement of the exercise, saying it was not too difficult before they were deployed to the field.
They, therefore, expressed dismay over the pronouncement by the INEC national commissioner in charge of publicity, Prince Solomon Soyebi, on national television where he told Nigerians that the commission was not happy with sad stories so far recorded in the ongoing exercise and put the blame on the youth corps members whom he said the commission assumed would know the be.
But the corps members said INEC was only crying wolf because the problems they had with the machines were not how to operate it but that “these machines go off at will, especially when they get hot and take several hours for to come back to life.”
Apart from the DDC machines that gave them a lot of trouble during registration, they complained the laptops issued to them had more problems, not to talk of the printer machines that would fail as soon as they were ready to print out the voter’s card.
They wondered if they also needed to be computer literate to operate a printing machine.
“They should stop putting the blame on us and calling us names because we are not what they say we are. They should blame themselves for giving us equipment that are sub standard because even the people who have been coming to register know what we are passing through,” they said.
and encouraging us not to be frustrated with the performance of the machines that is why they endure and stay for hours at the registration center until we are able to sort the problems with the machines. Some of them even try to help by suggesting solutions we can apply to make the machines work. Virtually everything were given to come and work is bad, ranging from the DDC machine, the laptops and the printers and there is nothing we can do about it, even those that have Phd in Information Communication Technology cannot do anything about it, they should have gone for original products instead of these things they gave us”.
However the corps members say there has been improvement in the registration as they have deployed several means of getting the voters registration as a result of the consistent failure of the machines.
Some of them told Daily Sun that they were able to register as much a hundred people between Monday and yesterday(Tuesday) and express the hope that the number will increase before the end of the week.
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