Reports made available to THE OBSERVERS TIMES by some aggrieved disenfranchised voters has it that the Independent National Electoral Commission staff in the Karu headquarters office are deliberately refusing to issue the permanent voters cards (PVC) to Southerners even when the PVCs are available.
They said that they have for the past months visited the office and all their visits were met with the same reactions of their “PVCs not available”.
HOW THE BURBLE BUSTED: Last week during the rush to beat the deadline for collection, one Miss Nnenna submitted her temporary voters card along with others who came to collect their PVCs, as usual they told most of us that the PVCs were not ready or available – Miss Nnenna.
In the process, the officials misplaced my temporary voters card. They (The Officials) would later ask Miss Nnenna to go and return after the general elections for possible solution. This didn’t go down well with her and she requested that the officials give her a form to fill or any evidence that would enable her to exercise her civic right.
For hours, she kept on disturbing the officials until they became tired of her insistence. She said; they requested that I provided them with my name, address and other details to enable the officials narrow down the search for my card.
Moments later, they called me to a table to identify my card, but this time, it was my permanent voters card. I was shocked to see my mother’s and sister’s among the bunch of cards in that section.
Once my got my permanent voters card, I rushed home to tell my mother and sister to go and get their PVCs, but upon getting there, they were met with disappointment as the same officials told them that their PVCs were available at that moment.
Also one Mrs. Ijeoma in her chat with THE OBSERVERS TIMES lamented that she had spent more than 200 days trying to get her PVC at least twice in a week, but all her efforts ended in futility. She pointed out that this peculiar problem did not apply to others who are not southerners.
This is unacceptable, we live and work in Abuja, therefore, we can’t travel down to the southeast to register as voters as the process will be time, energy and money consuming she said. “INEC was supposed to be neutral and fair to all. But what we are witnessing is gross injustice” – Mrs. Ijeoma
Please feel free to send in your eyewitness reports to eyewitness@observerstimes.com
