Senator Oluremi Tinubu has urged the Federal Government to declare public holidays for collection of Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs), ahead of the December 2018 deadline.
This was following revelations by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that over seven million PVCs have yet to be collected nationwide, with one million and four hundred thousand from Lagos State.
The Senator believes the 2012 General elections showed that votes count and so citizens should get their PVCs in order to fulfill their civic responsibilities.
“With previous elections, Nigerians developed voter apathy due to a distrust of the system.
” The 2015 elections taught us, however, that as individuals, our votes count. Thus, we must rise up as citizens to fulfill our civic responsibility and ensure accountability in governance.
“Towards the 2019 elections, INEC had released modalities for ongoing continuous voter registration. The centres open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily.
“The period should be extended; and should include weekends to allow people who were unable to visit the centres during work hours to do so at weekends.
“INEC should ensure that it had adequate resources to make the process quick and easy, ” she said.