Electoral Commissioner Laments Attitude of Electorates on Collection of Voter Cards

The Resident Electoral Commissioner REC in Kwara State, Mr Attahiru Madami, has lamented the poor attitude of the electorates in the state toward the collection of Permanent Voters Cards PVCs.

Speaking at a stakeholders’ meeting held in Ilorin, the state capital on Wednesday ahead of the 2023 general elections in the state, the INEC boss said that the commission is still having a lot of challenges in the state in terms of PVCs collection.

According to him, out of the new 46,602 PVCs received from the INEC headquarters in the state, that it’s only 18,885 had been collected with a balance of 27,602 waiting for collection.

“From 2011 to 2019 the state had a total number of 233, 856 uncollected PVCs”, he said, adding that “out of this only 20,752 were collected as of October this year leaving over 193,000 uncollected, Madami declared.

On incident PVCs collection, he hinted that the state had 20,506, adding that only 6,055 had so far been collected with 14,451 yet to be collected.

He also said that the state had 43,008 invalid registration figures, one of the least in the country.

Madami said that the state currently has 1,689,288 registration figures s opposed to 1,401,895 in 2019.

“Completed registration figures are 330,401 and valid registration figures are 287, 393,” he added.

In this view, the Commissioner of Police in the state, Paul Odama, warned politicians not to “feed” their supporters with hard drugs.

The police commissioner urged politicians to embark on issue-based campaigns and not personality-based campaigns.

Odama stressed the need for political office seekers to ensure that their followers are civil in all their actions.

 “As enshrined in the electoral law, vote-buying and selling will not be allowed” he warned.

“On our part, we will do all within our powers to support and collaborate with stakeholders to ensure that our democracy is firmly rooted in the country.

The Police boss also cautioned politicians to shun thuggery and damage to the billboards of opposing parties.

Dominica Nwabufo