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LAST week, personnel of the 9 Brigade, Nigerian Army, recovered 1,671 Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) from a flat in the Olodi-Apapa area of Lagos State. They also recovered ballot papers, cutlasses and rolls of cannabis. They arrested three suspects in connection with the incident while the prime suspect was said to be on the run. According to the Brigade Commander, Brigadier-General Isang Akpaumontia, who paraded the suspects and the recovered exhibits before journalists at the Ikeja Cantonment, the arrests and recovery were made following a tip-off, and in collaboration with personnel of the Department of State Services (DSS). Interestingly, most of the recovered PVCs had the year 2022 as the registration date while others had the years 2011, 2012 and 2021, with all the owners being residents of Lagos State.
Brigadier-General Akpaumontia said: “The suspects were arrested with some drugs, dagger, charms and over 1,000 PVCs. The owner of the house, who is the prime suspect, was traced to a hotel. But he took off. We are going to hand these suspects and exhibits over to our immediate headquarters to do the needful because things have to be done the way they should so as to discourage others who think they can take the law into their own hands and go scot-free.”
This incident is indeed disturbing. Just like it happened in Lagos last week, PVCs were discovered in a forest in Anambra State shortly before the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections and were subsequently distributed to their owners. In all probability, the perpetrators of this electoral crime meant to subvert the democratic process in order to achieve some predetermined, apparently sinister ends. That is why this incident must be comprehensively probed. If anything, these PVC discoveries portray the country as a jungle, a clime that does not run on any known procedure and process, especially given the way that governments and their agencies and structures treat Nigerians while pretending to be carrying out their responsibilities. There have been many reports of the discovery of PVCs in many untoward places in the past without the authorities offering any reasonable explanation on them or conducting serious investigations to determine what actually happened and how to prevent it in future.
In case the government needs any reminding, PVCs are produced only by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and it ought to have a good, verifiable and monitorable process for their disbursement to individual voters. This is not only to prevent the dumping of PVCs in different untoward places but to be able to account for infractions when they happen. Unfortunately, this is not the case, as the government typically does not give Nigerians any updates after such discoveries. Even in the present case, and with the arrest of some suspects connected to the discovered PVCs, it could still be business as usual as the military and other security agencies involved with the case could simply go to sleep on the matter thereafter. We are not being unduly cynical; we would be happy to be proved wrong for once.
We would rather that the government act differently now and seize this opportunity to get to the root of the matter. Just how did PVCs come to be with those who were not authorised to handle them, thus leading to their discovery in unusual and untoward places? Why would any group of criminals have custody of people’s PVCs when, ahead of the ongoing elections, many desperate would-be voters thronged INEC offices looking for their PVCs? Or were the PVCs seized from their real owners by political pirates under various pretexts? Surely, Nigerians deserve to know the truth about these PVCs in the wrong hands and in strange places, and it is the duty and responsibility of the government to provide answers and explanations. But will it?
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