By Mudiaga Afe
The Resident Electoral Commissioner in Cross River State, Mr. Mike Igini, on Wednesday decried the non-collection of 261,416 Permanent Voters Cards by registered voters across the various local government areas of the state.
He said it was worrisome that despite the huge publicity and mobilization carried out by the commission in conjunction with other stakeholders; only 764,344 persons collected their PVCs, out of the total of 1,025,760 that were received from INEC’s headquarters.
Igini disclosed that Akpabuyo, Calabar Municipality and Calabar South Local Government Area recorded the lowest collections with 43%, 49% and 50% per cent respectively.
The REC made this observation at an emergency meeting with political parties at the office of the Independent National Electoral Commission in Calabar.
At the meeting he said that the Continuous Voters Registration would take place in the area offices from September 22 to 28, 2014.
The meeting had in attendance representatives from the All Progressives Congress, the Peoples Democratic Party, the Labour Party, the Progressives People’s Alliance and the Inter-Party Advisory Council, among others.
He pointed out that the success of the 2015 general elections would largely depend on the success of the PVC distribution, adding that no voter would be allowed to vote without the PVC.
Igini said, “The commission recalls that despite the various approaches adopted to sensitize and mobilize the people, which included the formation of the National Inter-Agency Committee on Voter Education and Publicity, Local Government Inter-Agency Committee, amongst other platforms, several PVCs are still lying at INEC area offices in the state.”
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