The national leader of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Ogun State Governor Ibikunle Amosun have decried the ongoing distribution of permanent voter’s cards by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
Tinubu, at a press conference in Lagos yesterday said the the electoral umpire have merged with the PDP to form a, “formidable rigging body’.
The former Lagos State governor lamented that ,“This exercise is not acceptable. INEC is colluding with the presidency to rig the forthcoming election. This is a deliberate collusion as far as I am concern. It is inexcusable. INEC has merged with Jonathan to form a formidable rigging body. We will stand to protect our rights,” he said.
“In 2011, a total of 6,247,845 people registered. Surprisingly, the recent figure claimed by INEC had whittled that figure down to 4.8 million. The reasons for this sudden and steep drop are shrouded in mystery and suspicion due to lack of INEC’s transparency.
“Polling units whose registered voters have been reduced to zero are on the increase and the number of such empty units now stands at a staggering 1,801 million. The question INEC needs to answer is how did all these names got wiped down to such zero?
“It boggles the mind that in a densely populated and politically active state such as Lagos, there can be so many units with no registered voters at all. This bellied the recent history of voting in Lagos. It makes no logical sense.”
The governor declared that he was not happy with the whole situation and wondered why INEC failed to do its homework very well before fixing dates for the PVC distribution.
Amosun called for the extension of the exercise till Tuesday, saying that the last two days had been a wasteful one with no clear result.
He disclosed that less than 10 per cent of the people of the State have been able to get their cards after 48hours, adding that, with this development, it shows clearly that there is terribly something that has gone wrong with the Commission.
Amosun said, “We have gone round the State and between yesterday and today, we have been to almost eight local governments in the State. With all the reports coming from all the 20 local governments, I am not happy with the exercise. Our people are not happy too, they have been agitated and restless.
“We are not the one that set the date, it is INEC and to complement them, we declared a work free day and today, which is the second day,our people have not had it so good, which means, technically, we have wasted two days,which literally means that we have not started yet in Ogun State. Only about 10% of our people have got the cards. There is a problem. We should take it that we are yet to start the
exercise in Ogun State.
“So, as it is now, we will be asking for an extension till Tuesday and tomorrow will be the beginning of that of ours in the State and the last two days will be like doing necessary preparation for the exercise in the State.
“Our uniqueness, special status and closeness to Lagos, all our border towns, we have a lot of new settlements which are coming up, no arrangement is made for them.In one of the areas,Magboro, Arepo, Ayetor-Igbede along the Lagios axis, over 16,000 people in that area has no single polling booth.
“From 1.8million, just 1.4 million people were recognised and if about 500,000 to 600,000 are off, it shows something is terribly wrong.We should not allow the insinuation of the people that maybe, INEC is trying to sabotage or do certain thing. I know that this is not a
deliberate thing, INEC is not out to disenfranchise our people. Whatever the challenges are, I do not believe that there is motive behind this.”
