Wajir West MP Ahmed Kolosh now wants the ongoing voter registration suspended in Northern Kenya until it rains.
The Jubilee legislator argues that it will be very difficult for residents of the Northern Kenya region to travel for kilometers to register as voters when they are currently fighting for their lives due to the ongoing droughts in the region.
“But we want to urge the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to suspend the exercise of voter registration forthwith so that this exercise, especially for Northern Kenya, can resume when the rains come,
“It will be very difficult for someone fighting for his or her livelihoods to travel hundreds and thousands of kilometers to register as voters,” the MP said.
This comes at a time when the commission has decried low low number of voter registration ahead of the 2022 General Election.
The electoral body commenced the mass voter registration on October 4, 2021, and is set to run the exercise for 30 days until November 2, 2021.
The Wafula Chebukati led commission has once again missed its weekly target by a wide margin across the country with persistent apathy in the ongoing mass voter registration now threatens to deny the electoral commission its target of six million new voters ahead of the next year’s polls.
Only 491,968 new voters have enlisted in the last two weeks representing a paltry 15.5 percent.
“The commission would like to report that a total of 491,968 being newly registered voters have been enrolled out of the two weeks’ target of three million,” said IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati on Monday, October 18.
Kiambu, Murang’a, Nyeri, and Nyandarua counties recorded less than 10 percent of their target for the second week of the month-long mass voter registration, suggesting extreme apathy in President Uhuru Kenyatta’s backyard.
