It has been established that 108,000 registered voters will not vote during the 11 November governorship election in Kogi State, the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Gabriel Longpet, has disclosed.
The figure represents the number of registered voters who did not show up during the four-week window INEC opened for the collection of Permanent Voter Cards during the last collection exercise which lasted from 10 September to 9 October 2023.
In an exclusive interview with Arewa PUNCH in his Lokoja office, the Kogi REC further revealed that as at the close of the collection date on 9 October 2023, only 20,000 PVCs had been collected out of the outstanding 128,000 uncollected before the general election of February 2023.
Longpet disclosed, “The last day was 9th October for collection of PVCs, and we identified the number yet to be collected to be 128,000 uncollected PVCs in Kogi State. So, the Commission thought it wise to give more people the opportunity to come forward and collect theirs, since the majority of those affected were those who have requested for transfer and those who have defaced their cards.
“We have since gone through, and I am sad to say that within the period of four weeks, we are not able to distribute to people the number of PVCs we estimated because people didn’t come to collect their cards. Actually, just about 20,000 out of the 128,000 were collected during the period of the four weeks”, he noted.
Kogi is one of the states whose Governorship election is conducted off INEC’s regular election season. The state does not conduct its elections at the same time as the general election due to an earlier political crisis which led to court injunctions that ensured that the then Governor, Alhaji Ibrahim Idris spent an extra nine months in office even after the expiration of his two-term of eight years in 2011.
Before the presidential election, which was held on 25 February 2023, out of a total of 1.65 million registered voters, only 476,038 persons voted. This means that only one in every four registered voters in the state voted in the last presidential election.
There was also a total number of 128,000 PVCs uncollected.
While speaking on steps being put in place to ease accessibility to flood-prone areas and the riverine parts of the state for easy accessibility and movement of election materials, personnel and logistics, the REC assured that such areas like Ibaji, Kupa, Egon and others already identified would be given special consideration.
“We are talking to the Airforce and the Navy to see the possibility of making use of their Aircraft and boats for conveying both personnel and electoral materials to and from those areas”, he said.
Dr Longpet who also commented on the payment modalities for the Ad-hoc staff stressed that this category of INEC workers have been warned not to domicile their transfer account in any bank not recognised by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)/to avoid delay in payment of their wages after the election.
“Some of those who experienced a delay in the payment of their wages last time were those who used online banks that were not recognised by the CBN like ‘OPay’, ‘Palmpay’, ‘Kuda’ and other such online banks. We will not accept those banks this time around to avoid the unpleasant experience of not getting paid as and when due”, he advised.
