Saturday-6th November, 2021: Dr Chris Ngige, Nigeria’s Minister of Labour and Employment, could not get his accreditation done in order to vote for over an hour due to the failure of the Biometric Voters Accreditation System machine.
The minister who was at the Alor Ward polling unit in the Idemili South Local Government Area of the state during the exercise, however put the failure rate of the machine at 30 per cent.
Ngige insisted that he would wait until he voted despite the setback.
He made a plea to the Independent National Electoral Commission to find a lasting solution to hitches during manual accreditation so as to allow people to exercise their franchise.
He said, ” I have been here for over an hour without success. I’m not impressed.”
Ngige said, “The failure rate is between 25 to 30 per cent. This is not encouraging. INEC ought not to pack its equipment after each election. They should have tested their machine a week before the elections in a mock trial.”
Based on the situation, the minister further made calls to some ‘high quarters’ to complain as he said,” I won’t leave here until I vote.”
