Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Committee for the Protection of Peoples Mandate (CPPM) has lauded the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for ensuring adequate Permanent Voters’ Card (PVC) collection, especially at the ward level.
In a statement made available to Business Post by Mr Nelson Ekujumi, its Executive Chairman, the committee said it mobilized its personnel to observe the process in Lagos State and also monitored reports via the media and other sources, and as a result, it is “confidently passing a vote of confidence on INEC for its professionalism and dedication to the seamlessness of the process.”
“We make bold to state that our physical observation and monitoring of collection of PVC at various wards centres across Lagos State shows a fairly encouraging turnout of registrants on a daily basis,” the group said.
It revealed that it monitored wards across Oshodi, Agege, Alimosho, Apapa, Ajeromi Ifelodun, Ikorodu, Badagry, Kosofe and Ikeja local government council areas of Lagos State, adding that this revealed an average of 100 registrants collecting their PVCs daily.
“If we juxtapose these figures, which are almost uniform across the board with our people’s attitude to public interest issues, we are of the view that the turnout so far is encouraging though we recognize that we can still do better, hence the need to admonish all stakeholders to upscale the sensitization so that more people can come out to collect their PVC before the extended closing date of January 29th 2023,” CPPM submitted.
The organisation added that the electoral body has lived up to the billing in line with its mandate as enshrined in the Electoral Act.
In the same breath, the group admonished INEC to increase its staff strength at the centres to reduce the collection time by the registrants, which it identified as an area of shortcomings in the process.
“However, we are not oblivious to the attempts by anti-democratic elements and agents of destabilization to impugn the integrity of the process through blackmail of fake news, falsehood, and misinformation just to discredit INEC and derail our democracy. We must report that from our observation of the process so far, most alarms of falsehoods of ethnicization of the collection of the PVC have not been substantiated in any of the collection centres visited by our crew.
“We at CPPM hereby call on INEC to continue to monitor the process to sustain its integrity which is under threat from fake news by anti-democratic elements and agents of anarchy, just as we admonish the electoral umpire to collaborate with the security agencies in investigating any observed or reported shortcomings and do the needful to arrest the situation as well as the arrest and prosecution of peddlers of fake news and misinformation who have become the greatest threat to our democracy and society.
“As we countdown to January 29th 2023, the closing date for the collection of PVC across the country, the Committee for the Protection of Peoples Mandate (CPPM) calls on Nigerians who are yet to pick their PVC to ensure that they go out to collect theirs notwithstanding the little inconvenience of the crowd at some centres so that collectively we will determine with our votes at the polls, our political destiny for a peaceful, progressive and prosperous Federal Republic of Nigeria,” the statement read.
