151, 575 PVCs lying uncollected in Abia, says INEC
One hundred and fifty-one thousand, five hundred and seventy-five (151, 575) permanent voters cards (PVCs) are stilling lying uncollected in Abia State, says the new Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Dr. Joseph Ilo.
Dr. Iloh said from April when the voters’ registration exercise began, a total of 27, 285 people have been registered, which he said was not encouraging, lamenting over the level of apathy in the on-going continuous voters registration exercise, while urging the people of the state to go and register and ensure that they get their PVCs.
Lamenting over the lackadaisical attitude of prospective voters in collecting their permanent voters cards (PVCs), Iloh said he would want to have eligible voting strength of Abia State to be not less than two million from the present figure of above one million, pointing out that what he saw in the Local Government Areas he has so far visited was not very encouraging.
To this end, the commission, he said, would engage the services of town criers to carry the message down to the rural grassroots where farmers don’t have time to listen to radios and read newspapers.
Six new registration centres, he said, has been created in the state but said the commission would improve on the registration and to bring the centres up to 23, naming the new centres created to be in Aba North and Aba South; Obingwa, Isiala Ngwa South, Umunneochi and Ohafia council areas.
He directed all the Electoral Officers (EOs) in the 17 council areas of the state to “reach out to traditional rulers, religious leaders, executives of Christian Association of Nigeria, town union leaders, traders’ unions, NGOs as well as youth and women organisations to mobilise and encourage their subjects and members who have not registered to do so”.
The commissioner, who also had a town hall meeting on Thursday with political parties and stakeholders, tasked political parties to make it mandatory for their members to attend meeting with their PVCs as a way of encouraging them to register as “there are many of them who are not registered,” stating that lack of political awareness was one of the causes of the apathy in the registration exercise.
While appealing to Aba traders to make out time to register, Iloh announced that the commission has commenced the display of the temporary voter register of all those so far captured in the on-going exercise, stating that the display would last for seven days and urged people who had registered to endeavour to collect their PVCs, warning also that “it is an electoral offence to register twice and defaulters will be sanctioned and their names deleted from the voter register”.
