Stakeholders in Ikorodu Division, Lagos State, have begun mobilisation of residents for the collection of their Permanent Voter Cards to enable them to participate in the forthcoming general election in the state.
The PUNCH gathered that the stakeholders, including royal fathers, political leaders, chieftains of the Community Development Committees/Community Development Associations, market leaders, traditional chiefs, and students, among others, engaged in the mobilisation owing to the large number of unclaimed PVCs in the division.
Speaking during the event organised by the Ikorodu Divisional Council of Obas and Chiefs, a former state Commissioner for Agriculture, Koali Olusanya, said politics started from people’s households and should not be left to only the politicians.
He said, “It will be unfair that on election day we only record 40,000 out of 300,000 in Ikorodu. For us to even vote, the first step we ought to take is to collect our PVCs and it’s such a pity that the cards we have collected in Ikorodu division so far are not up to 150,000.
“If you get to the INEC office, you will see a lot of cards that are yet to be collected and if we fail to collect those PVCs, we won’t be able to show the power of the Ikorodu population. The benefit of collecting the card and using it to vote is that it will make the government pay more attention to us in Ikorodu.”
Also speaking, the senator representing the Lagos East Senatorial District, Tokunbo Abiru, said in 2015 and 2019, less than 200, 000 votes were recorded out of over a million registered voters, adding that in Ikorodu division, less than 50,000 votes were recorded by the APC out of about 340,000 registered voters.
“So, we have work to do because the registered voters we have in Ikorodu now is 389,000. We still have time to collect the PVCs and you all have to help us because you are the owners of the town”, Abiru said.
In his remarks, the House of Representatives member representing the Ikorodu Federal Constituency 1, Babajimi Benson, also charged residents in the division to get their PVCs.
Benson said, “We are not collecting our PVCs, as of today, we have only collected fewer cards, which is also very bad. We ought to be competing with other divisions in Lagos State, but we are not.
“We keep calling ourselves Ikorodu Oga, which we are, but we have to show them that indeed we are the boss. Everywhere aside from Ikorodu, they collect over 2,000 PVCs per day; in Alimosho, they do collect 8,000 PVCs daily; in Eti Osa, they do collect 5,000 per day; but here, we are still collecting 2,000 daily, which is not good enough.”
The Ayangbure of Ikorodu, Oba Kabir Shotobi, said the Ikorodu division would support the government in power for more development as he charged residents to get their PVCs and vote.
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