Adibe Emenyonu in Benin City
The Assembly of Registered Political Parties (ARPP), in partnership with the National Orientation Agency (NOA) yesterday began Operation Collect Your Permanent Voters Card (PVC) and Violence free campaigns in Edo
Chairman of the group, Mr Bishop Akhalamhe, said during the event in Benin that the enlightenment campaign became necessary in view of reports of over 500,000 uncollected PVCs in INEC office, in the state.
Akhalamhe, who is also the state chairman of Zenith Labour Party (ZLP), said: “This is a Flag-off campaign for Operation Collect Your PVC and Violence Free Elections.
“We do not want to be having elections, characterised by violence, where people have to be killed, maimed because of elections.
“We also discovered that in Edo State, a lot of people have not collected their PVCs, whereas, INEC told us during our last stakeholders’ meeting with them that over 500,000 uncollected PVCs are with them.
“As stakeholders and political leaders, we decided to come together under the umbrella of ARPP to push this campaign to encourage people to go to INEC offices to collect their PVCs.
”We are doing this because we want them to be eligible to vote. If you say you want to change a system, the first process is to get PVC. We are basically helping INEC and collaborating with NOA to see how we can have a better society”.
The exercise will be taken round the three senatorial districts. The State Director, NOA, Mr Austin Odile noted that registration and collection of PVCs were the first steps to be taken in an electoral process.
“When this is not done, the outcome will throw up mediocrities and unpopular candidates. A lot of people still show apathy towards democratic process because they have not benefited from the gains of democracy since 1999, and as a result, they do not see any reason why they should participate.
” We are using the campaign to encourage them to take ownership of the process and participate actively,” he said.
Odile, however, called on the youth not to allow themselves to be used as thugs to disrupt the process.
“The youth demographic is huge, that is the reservoir where mischievous politicians recruit, train and deploy young men as thugs to disrupt the election process.
“We are reaching out to them and their parents to say that they should not sell their future to those masquerading as their saviour”.
