Commission on Tuesday revealed that 6.7 m PVCs were locked up in INEC safes across 17 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
The INEC had announced that the collection window for PVCs will commence December 12,2022 and end on January 22.
The INEC National Commissioner for Information and Voter Education, Festus Okoye, disclosed in a statement that with effect from January 6 -15,2023 the collection of the PVCs will be devolved to the ward level after which collection would be moved to the local government areas.
During the 2019 general elections, the INEC said it had about 82.3m registered voters, however only 28.6m voted in the polls which resulted in the re-election of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) who polled 15m to defeat his closest rival, Atiku Abubakar, who scored 11.2m votes.
During the Lagos governorship elections, less than 2m voted in the poll which was won by Babajide Sanwo-Olu of the APC. He garnered 739,445 votes to defeat Jimi Agbaje of the PDP who got 206,141 votes.
Data from the Lagos state INEC office revealed that as of December 29, a total of 1,693,963 PVCs remained uncollected. This was disclosed in a document tagged ‘INEC Lagos PVCs Reports.’
It stated, “Old PVCs received from headquarters – 6,570,291; old PVCs collected up till December 29, 2022 – 5,653,330. Total uncollected old PVCs – 916,961; New PVCs received from headquarters – 940,200; New PVCs collected as at December 29, 2022 – 163,198.
“Total uncollected New PVCs –777,022; Overall total PVCs received from headquarters- 7,510,491; Overall PVCs collected as at December 29, 2022 -5,816,528; Overall PVCs uncollected 1,693,963.’’
government areas in the state.
He explained that the collection of PVC is going on daily including Saturdays and Sundays (excluding public holidays) from 9am to 3pm at INEC offices across the 18 local government areas of the state.
Commenting on the apathy to the PVCs collection, the Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Ibrahim Abdullahi, described it as a dangerous precedent, which he said smacked of mischief by the All Progressives Congress regime.
