News Editor
By David Odama,
Barely one and half month to the general election, parties have faulted the low pace of PVC distribution in Nasarawa State blaming the situation on the attitude of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the ongoing collection of Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs)
In an interview, Senatorial Candidate of the Zenith Labour Party in the state, Hon Cletus Ogah urged INEC officials to to FasTrack the distribution of PVC to reduce the high level of frustration currently faced by the prospective voters in Nasarawa.
According to the ZLP Senatorial candidate in Nasarawa South, most PVC collectors in several ward in the Senatorial district are confronted with slow pace, stating that something be urgent done to to address the situation to avoid Nigerians being disenfranchised.
“If nothing was urgently done to remedy the situation, many Nigerians will not only be disenfranchised during the election, spell doom for the nation democratic process”.
He called on INEC to decentralized the exercise further from the ward levels for easy collection, declaring that many Nigerians who registered for the PVCs are still finding it difficult to collect their voter’s cards.
“We have received reports from all our zones in the state and the nation at large including messages of the slow pace at which the PVCs are being distributed to prospective collectors,” Ogah declared..
“According to INEC schedule, we have days left for registered Nigerians to collect their PVCs, Nigerians queue for hours just for about 500 out of thousands of PVCs to be collected. It is not good enough for our democratic system, the Senatorial candidate declared.
I’m wondering and imagining the kind magic INEC will deploy to ensure that Nigerians get their PVCs within the stipulated time except they are keeping some motive behind the scene. Collection of PVCs started on December 12th last year and is expected to end January, 22nd, up till now, many of our members are complaining about the cumbersome nature of INEC and it’s staff distributing the PVCs”.
He further called on INEC to open up on its designed weak operations to Nigerians before people will start believing that there is hidden script, urging security agencies to beef up security around INEC facilities nationwide to check the activities of vandals and arsonists who want to scuttle the elections.
Today is 12th of January and 22nd of this month is the deadline, are we sure that the process will not collapse and Nigerians will be denied their inestimable rights to vote in the forthcoming election.
