AHEAD of the February 25, 2023, general elections, stakeholders who convened for a PVC collection mobilisation campaign in Ikorodu have hailed residents of Alimosho LGA for collecting their Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) at a daily rate of 8,000.
The House of Representatives member representing the Ikorodu Federal Constituency 1, Hon. Babajimi Benson, during the meeting equally encouraged his constituents in Ikorodu to do more in addition to their current 2,000 daily collection rate.
In his remarks, Hon. Babajimi Benson said, “We are not collecting our PVCs, as of today, we have only collected fewer cards, which is also very bad. We ought to be competing with other divisions in Lagos State, but we are not.
“We keep calling ourselves Ikorodu Oga, which we are, but we have to show them that indeed we are the boss. Everywhere aside from Ikorodu, they collect over 2,000 PVCs per day; in Alimosho, they do collect 8,000 PVCs daily; in Eti Osa, they do collect 5,000 per day; but here, we are still collecting 2,000 daily, which is not good enough.”
The stakeholders, including royal fathers, political leaders, chieftains of the Community Development Committees/Community Development Associations, market leaders, traditional chiefs, and students, among others, engaged in the mobilisation owing to a large number of unclaimed PVCs in the division.
Speaking during the event organised by the Ikorodu Divisional Council of Obas and Chiefs, a former state Commissioner for Agriculture, Koali Olusanya, said politics started from people’s households and should not be left to only the politicians.
He said, “It will be unfair that on election day we only record 40,000 out of 300,000 in Ikorodu. For us to even vote, the first step we ought to take is to collect our PVCs and it’s such a pity that the cards we have collected in the Ikorodu division so far are not up to 150,000.
“If you get to the INEC office, you will see a lot of cards that are yet to be collected and if we fail to collect those PVCs, we won’t be able to show the power of the Ikorodu population. The benefit of collecting the card and using it to vote is that it will make the government pay more attention to us in Ikorodu.”