A renowned scholar and Director of the Abuja School of Social and Political Thoughts, Dr Sam Amadi, has slammed the Lagos State Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, Olusegun Agbaje, for calling some Permanent Voter Card, PVC, registrants from the Southeastern part of the country as “migrants”.
Amadi said Agbaje was a disaster, insisting he should be called to order.
He spoke in a post via his Twitter handle on Thursday.
Recall that Agbaje had, while featuring on Channels television’s programme on Thursday, denied the state was having serious challenges with the distribution of the PVCs.
He claimed migrants from the Southeast were the ones who had issues with the collection of PVC.
He said, “Lagos State INEC is trying its best, and I don’t think there is a serious problem in the state. We are not having any challenges. The challenge we have is that many people that ought to have done a transfer last year did new registration, and by the commission’s guidelines, anybody with new registration cannot get another PVC because it is assumed he already has one PVC. The only area with the majority of people in that category is in Oshodi, particularly Okota, in Oshodi Local Government Area.
“And so we have told the people that they cannot have PVC because many of them are from the South Eastern part of the country. Last year because of the insecurity in their area they ought to have migrated to Lagos. But what they did was to go and do another registration which is double registration.”
However, Amadi accused Agbaje of stigmatizing Nigerians as migrants.
He wrote, “This man is a disaster. In response to failing to give PVC to registrants, he talked about people who ‘migrated’ from the Southeast. Haba. Is it southeast Mexico?
@inecnigeria should call him to order. Everyone who registered must vote. This guy failed.
“Instead of explaining and promising to look into the issues, he is accusing and stigmatizing Nigerians as migrants or immigrants.”