February 27, 2015 – At least 1.8 million Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) are yet to be collected by eligible voters registered in Lagos State.
Resident Independent Electoral Commissioner (INEC), Mr. Akin Orebiyi made the disclosure when he visited the Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola to demonstrate usage of the INEC card readers.
He said that 5,822,207 eligible voters were registered in Lagos out of a total of 68,833,476 registered voters in Nigeria.
According to him, out of the 5.5 million PVCs produced for Lagos State, only 3, 693, 000 cards have been collected, leaving a deficit of about 1.8 million cards. He added that a total of 430,000 PVCs are still being awaited from INEC headquarters in Abuja .
He said that INEC staffs have been deployed to the 8,462 polling units across the State.
“As at yesterday (Thursday), the total number of cards collected in Lagos to date is three million six hundred and ninety three thousand out of 5.5 million cards that we ‘ve collected so far from Abuja. At the moment we are still expecting another 430,000 cards which should arrive by next week. But meanwhile, we still have in our custody 1.8 million cards yet to been collected.
This morning we have again deployed our staff to all the 8,462 polling units across the State to make the collection much more accessible rather than stay at the local government offices where we have been for the past three weeks.
The Lagos REC also has dispelled the claims that some non-indigenes of Lagos were denied their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).
“Collection of cards was done practically by every Nigerian who registered in Lagos, we didn’t register people based on ethnicity and we are not also distributing card on the basis of ethnic groups.
“If indeed there have been issues of delay in collection of cards in certain parts of the State where perhaps non-indigenes populate, it is not a deliberate act, the cards are coming and they belong to the remaining 430,000 cards yet to be received from Abuja.
“ But principally, our register has shown that Nigerians from all walks of life and different ethnic groups have been collecting their cards.
“We have quite a number of INEC staff who are non-indigenes , out the twenty electoral officers, five of them that’s a quarter, are non-indigenes. The Head of voter education is from the South-East, my deputy is from South-South, I am from South-West but I’m married to a south-easterner, so we should discourage such insinuation,” Orebiyi noted.
He affirmed that voter register would also be used for the accreditation process which would last five hours on election days before the actual voting process and that adequate back-up plans have been put in place to forestall loss of data or gadgets.
Also speaking, Deputy Head of ICT in INEC, Mr. Muyiwa Yusuf, explained that the card readers have been configured to each polling unit in order to forestall cross-polling voting.
After carefully watching the process, Fashola enjoined INEC to sensitize the various political parties in the country on the workings of the card readers and what the people should expect on election days.
According to the Governor, this will help the parties to educate their members and supporters on the modalities for the election.
Fashola whose PVC was also used to test-run the card reader promised to extend the knowledge he had got from the process to others stakeholders in the state.
