With less than three months to the 2023 general election, the Resident Electoral Commissioner for Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Osun State, Dr Mutiu Agboke, has revealed that at least 407,165 Permanent Voters Cards, PVCs, remain uncollected in the state.
Agboke made the revelation on Saturday while fielding questions from journalists during an awareness campaign in collaboration with a non-governmental organization, Power Of PVC.
The program was to sensitize people on the need to collect their PVC as he acknowledged that non-collection of voters card is a big issue for the commission in the state.
He also disclosed that the state has received a total of 5,306 Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines ahead of the 2023 general elections.
His words: “Whether we like it or not in Nigeria today non-collection of PVC is a big problem for INEC and unfortunately we have discovered that some individuals have gone ahead purchasing PVCs for the electorates.
“So there is need for us to scale up the level of awareness for the people to go and collect it, for example when I resumed in Osun we have 408,197 PVCs and between December 12 and 17, only 1,032 PVCs have been collected.
“As I speak to you now, we have 407,165, waiting for collection. If we have over 400,000 PVC, and only 1,000 have been collected, it means we’ve not done anything, it means people have not really come out. So the first thing we have to do is to scale up our level of awareness.”
Agboke reiterated that the electoral body has embarked on the awareness campaign to encourage the voting public on the need to claim their PVCs.
Agboke while describing the readiness of the commission in the coming election said “we have received 5,306 BVAS, we are ready. We are charging, configurating, training our staffs and partnering with stakeholders daily. We have always been engaging our stakeholders”.
