Gombe — Some women in Bozon-Shilwa in Dukku Local Government Area of Gombe State are demanding for insecticide-treated mosquito nets before participating in the voter registration.

The District Head of Bozon-Shilwa, Alhaji Umaru Gurama, dropped the hint on Wednesday in Gombe in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

Gurama said that the women were promised the nets in the past, but that they never got any.

He said, "Initially, the turn-out of women was poor, but the situation changed. Some of them are, however, insisting on being given insecticide-treated mosquito nets before coming out to register.

"They claimed they were promised the nets during previous immunisation exercises, but never got them. We have promised them the nets and are expecting their cooperation."

Alhaji Mohammad Falke, the INEC Administrative Secretary in Gombe State, had listed Dukku, Nafada, Kwami, Funakaye as the areas with poor turn-out of women in the voter registration.

Meanwhile, INEC has been told that some Registration Officers had been thumb-printing for people whose finger prints were rejected by the DDC machines.

Malam Abubakar Hassan, a member of a Gombe-based NGO, Gender Awareness Development Association, gave the warning in Gombe at a workshop on voter registration organised by the National Orientation Agency.

He said, "In situations where a machine accepts seven of the 10 fingers and rejects three, the registration officers simply complete the rest with their own fingers."

Hassan said that they then issue temporary voters' cards to the affected persons.

Mrs Dudu Manga of the Association for Responsive Citizenship, another NGO, confirmed what Hassan said and cited Dukku Local Government Area as one of the places, where she witnessed the incident. Courtesy NAN.