It has been an odd drama at the voters’ registration points all over Nigeria since the exercise started last Saturday.
In most centres registration has been a flop to the extent that many intending voters have to leave the scene frustrated. What prevailed, and still prevails, is that people walk away with a promise to come back and complete the process some other time with hope that the machines would respond.

The long list of those who have experienced disappointment in the bid to register include former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Senate President, David Mark, among others.
The frustration of the machines is palpable in the faces of the registration officials who struggle with their tools over and again to take the data of intending voters.

An Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) supervisor has given insight into possible factors that could lead the Direct Data Capture (DDC) machines not to recognise or accept a person’s fingerprint. According to him, biodata capture machines that take fingerprints generally are programmed to reject any extraneous mark on the finger and that could be a cut, injury, gloss on the surface, gel or anything that blurs the natural weal marks on the finger.
As a result, the machines reject fingers that fall within the category and makes the recognition impossible as it naturally sees these as out of order with what it is programmed to accept as normal finger or thumbprints.

But to worsen the problem, the INEC official furthered her explanation by way of placating the Nigerians in the queue suffering the registration frustration that there are some other factors why the machines refuse fingerprints and would influence what it accepts as correct data.
Among such revelations from her is that a person intending to register may have problems with the machine if he or she has some health problems or inadequacies. She notified that “the machine normally rejects prints from someone whose blood pressure is higher than normal. It also does not easily take prints from somebody whose blood pressure is below normal. Also, diabetic patients intending to register might have problems with DDC recognition and data print acceptance. So if you belong to any of these categories I have mentioned, you have to be really patient and give the registration officials some time. It would do some good you leave the registration point, go back home and come back at a time you feel you are ok.”

With the almost impossible health conditions that disqualify someone, Daily Sun asked the INEC supervisor if there was much wisdom in the programming of the machine with such shortfalls or wide margin of rejections or selections, especially for the fact that many adult Nigerians fall within the health problem range.
Although she was speechless at the question and could not make any attempt at clearing it, but the points she made was instructive in getting a possible answer to why many people had problems getting registered.

With the economy level of Nigerians and the economic activities, some of the people in the queue wondered in anger how many Nigerians would at last qualify to register. “This is a society where most people struggle to survive doing all manner of odd and injury-prone jobs. So we should ask ourselves how many Nigerians that work in a place there are not exposed to injuries to their hands. I see all these points and reasons for the elimination of Nigerians from registration as a ploy to reduce the number of people that will eventually vote and still create another problem of disenfranchisement”, he fumed.