The Governor who gave an update to State House Correspondents at Lagos House, Ikeja on what transpired at his meeting earlier in the day with the Independent National Electoral Commissioner in Lagos, Mr Akin Orebiyi, who paid him a courtesy visit, stated that he has been briefed about the readiness of INEC to commence the distribution exercise from Wednesday 8.30a.m to 5.30p.m in the evening daily and lasting till Sunday.
He stated that what has changed is that from the former Wards Collation Offices of INEC, the collection has been moved closer to the people at the primary places where they usually vote and which they are familiar with and irrespective of where they registered.
The Governor maintained that he won’t give up and that INEC has acknowledged that it has received quite a number of more voters cards and his is presumably amongst them.
Affirming that he would not go forward to collect the PVC until the majority of Lagosians collect theirs, he declared: “A captain does not leave a ship when there is crisis and I must make sure all the passengers are safely evacuated so I want Lagosians to get theirs first. As a Governor, I enjoy certain privileges but I can’t go ahead of them so I want them to take the fullest benefit of this exercise before I collect mine”.
He also advised all those who have registered freshly to also proceed to the Polling Units where INEC has made arrangements to distribute the PVC to them, stressing that in case there are difficulties the state Government would continue to work with INEC towards providing solutions.
“I would keep an eye to see this new phase of the exercise. It allows the people the opportunity to vote and as I said, this exercise would start tomorrow. There is five days to do this, so that as many people as possible and hopefully everybody who is registered can get theirs at their poling units”, he stated.
The Governor also informed that he has been updated by the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner that the current registration exercise in Lagos has produced 5,905,000 people, adding that they are still doing some collation and that the final figure would be released when all is finally finished.
“I know people have tried. I have heard people say they have been to the places, the Ward Offices eight times and some four times and for me if you have made that kind of efforts, the real success must come in not giving up and I don’t give up and that is why I continue to address the issue”.
“I have made State broadcasts, I have granted interviews, I won’t give up on our people. They must get a chance to participates so the people themselves must be willing to persist and to persevere so that they will get an opportunity to have a say in how their affairs are ordered by being able to vote at the next elections”, he explained.
The Governor appealed to such people to see the hitherto unsuccessful efforts as adversity and hopefully when they succeed they would have the final joy on election days to say they finally voted and that would be the real success story in the difficult exercise of collecting Permanent Voters Cards.
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