APC PCC demands final breakdown of PVC collections from INEC

…Advises electoral umpire from using Oluomo to distribute election materials

From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja

All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), has directed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to update Nigerians on the final breakdown of the collection and distribution of Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) across the country ahead of this weekend’s presidential and National Assembly election.

APC PCC Director of Election Planning and Monitoring Directorate, Raji Fasola, made the appeal at a press briefing held in Abuja on Tuesday.
He however advised the commission to respect court ruling stopping the use of Musiliu Akinsanya (aka MC Oluomo-led), Lagos State Park and Garage Management Committee for the movement of staff and material to polling units within the state on election day.

INEC had insisted that it will go ahead with the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed with Lagos State Park and Garage Management Committee before a court ruling stopped the commission going ahead with the arrangement.

However, reacting to it, the PCC Director argued that the best to do in such circumstance will be to return to the court to vacate such order before they could continue with the arrangement.

On the request to the commission over PVC collections, he said: “We are prepared. We have trained agents… The big issue now is that with just a few hours to the elections, I think it is time for the regulator…”

“We are in the homestretch of the election and we think it is important now that INEC, the regulator to let us know, all the parties and the nation, to let us know how many people actually collected their PVCs. I think it is very important for the credibility of the results and the credibility of the elections.

“We have been acquainted with how many people registered, but we don’t have the numbers of how many people collected PVCs and that is a very important question to ask.

“I think I speak the minds of all the parties by demanding to know how many people collected PVCs, the breakdown of the PVCs collection per state and per local government and to every unit of electoral activity that INEC can provide that information.

“We think it is a very important piece of information that will help INEC reinforce the credibility of the exercise that it is undertaking.

“Other than that we are busy doing what we do best, preparing, planning. Our candidate is also campaigning in Lagos at this moment. Other teams are working on details of the last few hours of the election. We remain very optimistic that we will be victorious in this contest,” he boasted.

He ddemanded that the data be made available in the shortest possible time, hopefully, not later than close of business on Tuesday or certainly not later than 24 hours from Tuesday.

“As I said earlier, at every point in time, INEC has largely, especially through my learned friend, Festus Okoye always acquainted us –what has happened, the voter registration, when this would start. We even attended the simulation exercise with the BVAS.

“If they have been consistent with in providing all of that data, what about this, I think that it is only logical that we know how many have collected and that is the context in which we are.

“Because, we are the Election Planning and Monitoring Directorate, we have all of the other data but we don’t have that data. It is a crucially missing data in which to close our planning and projections.

“So, we asked that data be made available in the shortest possible time. Hopefully, not later than the the close of business today or certainly not later than 24 hours from now,” Fasola said.

The former Lagos State governor, also assured that cash scarcity will not affect the mobilisation of agents and other personnel on election day.

“We have trained our agents, we started that process long before this development (naira swap) became a real problem. But the enthusiasm from our agents and from our supporters is very inspiring and as it is comforting.

“What we hear from them is whether they get money, whether they get fuel, they are going to work for APC, they are going to deliver Asiwaju and all our candidates and other matters of money will be resolved later,” he said.

On court ordering MC Oluomo, Fasola said: “I think that by now, from my own public service records, where I stand on rule of law is no longer a matter for debate. I have been a public servant for 21 years and it is not what I say now that matters or what I do. It is the consistency of my conduct.

“I see that some sections if the media have tried to suggest that I was inviting certain authority to act in defiance in the court order.

“For me, there is no choice between the rule of law and my life. It is a force. My life really means nothing if it is not lived with the rule of law, that is what protect all of us.

“So, anybody who is faced with an order of court, whether it be INEC, whether it be anybody is bound to comply. Whether you like the court order or not, if you don’t like the court order, the rule has been set down from centuries ago that you must go back to the same court to say I am challenging this order.

“The person to whom the order is made should simply comply. There is no choice, it is the rule of law or nothing. So, when some sections of the media try to paint a picture when I was creating a hypothesis, they were just stretching common sense to a ridiculous ends,” he said.