The situation is the same across the wards visited by PREMIUM TIMES in the state. Some residents said the officials were closing early for fear of attack by bandits and other criminals.
hen Saheed, a resident of Lagos State, south-west Nigeria, visited a permanent voters card collection centre at St Michael’s Nursery and Primary School in the state, he had high hopes of picking up his PVC and returning home. But, some hours later, he was downcast.
“I came on Monday, Tuesday and Friday but couldn’t wait. Now they said they can’t find the printout. So, I went home and up till now, I have been waiting for like four hours.”“I came in less than five minutes and I got it,” Stephen Adeoye told this newspaper.Why voters face hurdlesn INEC official at the Igando PVC Collection Centre in Lagos State, who asked not to be named, told PREMIUM TIMES that some voters battle to pick their PVCs because they do not know their centres.
“It is called an incident. In such situations, we give them a form and they will fill it and we will escalate it to the higher authority,” he said. INEC said 1.6 million PVCs had not been collected in Lagos at the end of December though the situation has improved significantly. During the same period, over 100,000 cards had not been collected in Enugu State.
When Ms Nwaeueze wanted to pick the PVCs of her two siblings, she was asked to pay N1,000 for each of the cards by an official, an illegal sum. She did, albeit reluctantly. “My observation is that the INEC officials here are few and are not adequate to attend to the crowd we have here. Since I have been coming there has been one fight or the other.”t LEA Primary School Lugbe in FCT, a PVC collection centre, some volunteers were seen assisting hundreds of registered voters to queue up and write their names on a paper.Prince Obinna, who was part of the volunteers coordinating the voters, said INEC officials always arrived at the venue later than 9 a.m.
“They didn’t come on time. They came around 11 o’clock yesterday instead of 9 o’clock that was stated in our text message,” he said. Like the cleric, Esther Joseph, a banker, also took permission at her office to pick up her PVC. But the long queues dimmed her hope.Unlike LEA Lugbe Centre, there was no crowd. However, residents still face hurdles in collecting their PVCs at the centre.“It was stressful getting it,” a middle-aged woman who asked not to be named, said of the processes.
“I have been at this centre since 6 a.m. today and this is my third day without collecting my PVC,” she said. But when she finally arrived at the centre in mid-January, she was “happily shocked” that there were no queues at the centre believed to be one of the largest in Enugu North Local Government Area of the state.It was on a Saturday. Registered voters who arrived to pick their cards were few in number, although they come in and exit quickly after picking their cards.
Register voters are required to have their codes or their temporary cards to be issued their PVC, the voters said. Although the officials were mandated to close at 3:00 p.m. daily, Mrs Akpata, the leader at the centre, would stay up till about 4 p.m., especially when registered voters remain in the queues, another INEC official said.Like the WTC Primary School, there was no crowd at Umunevo Collection Centre in Enugu when a PREMIUM TIMES visited. But some INEC officials claimed the turnout had been “massive.”“There has been no difficulty in this area. The distribution is going on smoothly.
She visited the centre three times but still did not get her PVC, despite being successfully registered. Bukola Adetunji, one of the registered voters in the area, said closing at that hour has been a daily practice for the INEC officials at the wards. “They used to fight every time and I do not want problems for myself. That is why I prefer to leave my PVC there,” a commercial motorcyclist, Tunde Bodunrin, said.
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