Teryima Andrew, Jos
A youth group from Plateau state “Plateau G17 Youths for Peace and Progress Forum” has call for the extension of the ongoing voter registration to avoid decenfranchisement of citizens due to Permanent Voter Card PVC in next elections.
Leader of the group Dachung Bagos in a press release, made the call in Jos, Plateau state, on Monday; alledged that the registration process was hectic to citizens, therefore has denied many from assessing the Permanent Voters Card PVC.
He said the three months time frame giving for the registration by INEC was too short “as youths we will not accept the injustice on the ongoing voters registration and we had is only for three Months and a lot of people in the rural areas of Plateau State have not registered neither access their PVC, because everybody has the right to registered and everyone has the right to vote as long as the person is 18years.”
According to Mr. Bagos, in Jos South Local Government of Plateau State alone, only about 20,000 people have been issued their permanent Voters cards since 2015 out of the total of over 150,000 Voters in the Local government.
“Since Peace has now being achieved in Plateau State as result of the effort of Government, so we call on INEC to see how they can extend the ongoing voters card registration to the polling Unit as it use to be in the past, it was done in the polling Units in the past but, we don’t know why is different this time where people suffer, if INEC don’t have the manpower let them tell Nigerians to know” he revealed.
Mr. Bagos call on the INEC chairman Mahmood Yakubu, to extend the ongoing voter registration.
“We made bold and call on the chairman of INEC on behalf of our People in the villages that let this ongoing registration be taken to the various polling Units because it won’t be fair, it will be injustice for those in far villages to travel for two hours to the Local Government Headquarters to join a long queue before they will be registered, some will even spend the whole day without being registered”