It is not easy to be a Nigerian. It is even worse especially when there is an issue or event that involves you registering for something at an importance of national level. If you are a true Nigerian, you will know what I mean. But against all the odds, I prevailed and got registered to own a Permanent voters card for the forth coming elections in 2019.

Hi there and welcome to my blog today. My name is Great Morgan and as usual, it is a privilege to have you here reading this. First of all, I wish to thank @surpassingoogle for the #ulog tag. He has made it possible to own a culture of sharing your day-to-day live here on steemit. This would be my first official post under the #Ulog tag and I promise to be an active contributor to the tag as I have plans to share my snippets of my day using the tag. Without losing focus, let’s discuss more on what I have for today.

YES, I OFFICIALLY GOT REGISTERED FOR THE PVC AFTER SO MANY TRIALS

With Nigeria still undermining the power of technology and still doing things in an arcade manner and choosing to use analogue methods instead of going 100% digital, registration for the Permanent voter’s card has been stressful.

I have visited the closest center to me (which happens to be the INEC office annex at Ikot Akpan abia in Uyo Local government of Akwa Ibom state) for more than 3 times and I have been told to come back another day. At first, I must admit I was going there rather late because I had no prior knowledge of what time they started and ended operations. But even at that, they closed rather earlier than the time they claimed was for closing.

To be totally honest, I find some of these INEC officials rather rude and proud. The way they attended to people wasn’t too good mannered in my own eyes. Well, some of them were nice but the officials with higher ranks talked to people- especially the younger youths, as if they were already the Governor of the state LOL. I really don’t blame them. A typical Nigerian always feels so important when a small role is given to him or her – especially when that role involves supervising in a place where you can cause a halt for someone’s progress.

After visiting the center and being rejected or told to come another day, I was very aggressive at this my last visit. As soon as the officials started their stories of “come back tomorrow”, I knew within me that I was tired of wasting transport fare and I wasn’t going to bother about doing the registration again if I happened to be returned. Gracefully, I secured myself a registration form even though an official said it had finished and he was doing backyard “runs” by selling the forms he had left. LOL Nigerians would never seem to amaze me.

MY OBSERVATIONS AT THE REGISTRATION CENTER

The registration process took a lot of time. At most, I spent over 3 hours at a center that wasn’t even too populated. I must admit that although the INEC officials try to register tons of people daily, the need of extra hands shouldn’t be overlooked. Also, apart from the fact that most of the tech they used for the registration was arcade, I believe some of the officials were not agile enough for the process. I don’t want to look bad but I believe that the registration process would be more effective and quicker if the aged personals were replaced with vibrant youths or better still, if they were allowed to work together.

There are other observations I would have loved to point at such as; the structure of the INEC office, the lack of proper maintenance of the building’s environment and equipment, the unavailability of proper guidance team to educate those who might just be doing this voter’s card thing for the first time and so on, but for the sake of keeping this post rather short and enjoyable to read I will let that slide.

IN CONCLUSION

I felt really relieved after getting my temporary voters card. One of the main reasons I had to do the PVC registration was due to the fact that I needed a form of identity to register for some other important things like a new bank account, etc. Now that I have gotten it, I believe it would be useful soon as I have crossed the first stage of having a permanent voter’s card.

I also feel that the Nigerian government should look into matters of the state and try as much as possible to involve the use of technological innovations to solve problems or make certain processes faster. This way, Nigeria would be moving at a predictable fast speed towards economic growth and improvement.

Hopefully, tomorrow I would discuss the importance of having your PVC and why you should get registered soon. Thank you once again for reading this far, I remain @morgangreat your favourite steemian. I would love to read from you in a comment below; the challenges you faced while registering your PVC too or if you haven’t yet.