The new Independent National Electoral Commission’s Resident Electoral Commissioner for Osun State, Prof. Abdulganiyy Raji, has expressed concerns over the internal wranglings ravaging some of the parties expected to participate in the July governorship poll.
Prof Raji, who spoke to journalists in Osogbo, Osun state capital on Wednesday, however, said the situation the parties had found themselves was not new to the commission, but hoped the crises ravaging them would have fizzled out before the July 16 governorship poll.
He said even though the commission was bothered by the crises since it must not meddle in the internal affairs of the parties, there was nothing the commission could do about the situation.
“It is not something new to us because it has always been like that. At the end of the day, most of this issue would go down. Maybe before the election, you will just fizzle out and there will be peace and then we will conduct the election.
“We are concerned and making efforts to ensure that we are not going to have issues but at the same time, we are also making efforts to ensure that we have peace.
“We are bothered but there is very little we can do because we can’t interfere in their internal party democracies,” Raji said.
Speaking further on the commission’s preparation for the governorship poll, Raji said ongoing Continuous Voter’s Registration in the state would end by last week in March.
Lamenting that over 230, 000 permanent voter’s cards have not been collected by those that registered during the CVR exercise in the state, the INEC boss said the commission had embarked on measures that would ensure that owners of the PVCs claim them before the poll.
He said, “We have over 230,000 PVCs that are yet to be collected and we have sent these PVCs to our local government offices since June 2021 and that is over 6 months now.
“Only 397 has been collected since then throughout the state. We don’t know what is responsible and why people are not coming to collect it. We do mention it anytime we have voter education or sensitisation exercise. Yet, people are not coming to collect it.
“Our electoral officers and voter education and publicity officers at the local government areas do move around telling people that their PVCs are available for collection. Well, some people said it is possible that the uncollected ones belong to students who were schooling in Osun state then, but I asked myself if the total number of students that we have in Osun state is up to 230,000.
“We are taking some steps to make sure they are collected. It is not all our activities that can actually be dished out because we know that we are dealing with sensitive people.”
Copyright PUNCH.
All rights reserved. This material, and other digital content on this website, may not be reproduced, published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in whole or in part without prior express written permission from PUNCH.
Contact: [email protected]
