The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has accused Pat Utomi, a chieftain of the Labour Party (LP), of invading its office in the Oshodi-Isolo LGA of Lagos State.
INEC Resident Electoral Officer (REC) in Lagos State, Olusegun Agbaje, disclosed this on Channels Television on Thursday.
Agbaje said Utomi, held an illegal press conference at the INEC office.
The INEC REC said the action of the professor was not expected of a senior Nigerian, noting that the commission has reported the matter to the police and Department of State Services (DSS).
“Today in Lagos, Professor Pat Utomi did what we did not expect a senior Nigerian to do,” Agbaje said.
“He virtually invaded our office at Oshodi-Isolo Local Government Area with some people that we didn’t know and they held an illegal press conference inside our conference room at Oshodi.
“Pat Utomi is a senior person, we didn’t expect that from him, that is an invasion. We informed the police accordingly and the DSS about this invasion.
“It is uncalled for, it is an act of intolerance on his part, what he did today could have led to violence if other people in the area had reacted that way.
“But I think the security agencies did their best to ensure that there was no violence in that area.
“Pat Utomi ought to be blamed for the type of invasion and aggression that he showed today.”
Agbaje said he would have addressed the grievances of the LP chieftain if he had approached him.
At the INEC office in Oshodi LGA, some Nigerians have raised concerns over the difficulty faced in accessing their permanent voter cards (PVCs).
Addressing the concerns, the INEC REC said a lot of people who migrated from the southeast zone of the country to Lagos did a fresh registration instead of doing a transfer of their polling units to the state.
“At Oshodi-Isolo LGA, we had a lot of people that migrated from the south-east and they wanted to vote in Lagos,” he said.
“During our registration last year, instead of doing a transfer from the area (south-east zone), what they did was to do a fresh registration.
“Those who did transfer got their PVCs but those who did fresh registration apparently it amounted to double registration and they could not get their PVCs.”
On the number of PVCs distributed in Lagos so far, Agbaje said that a total of 5,734,559 have been distributed from the old PVCs registered in 2011, 2015 and 2019 while 835,732 PVCs are uncollected.
On the newly registered PVCs of 2021 and 2022, he said the state has received a total of 1.6 million out of which 899,026 have been collected so far and 168,000 uncollected.
Overall, Agbaje said the state received a total of 7.6 million out of which 6.6 million PVCs have been collected with one million PVCs left, amounting to 87% of collected PVCs so far in the state.
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