Igbo group protest alleged INEC attempt to disenfranchise S’East voters

An Igbo group, Odinala Cultural Heritage Foundation (OCHIE) Igbo, on Wednesday protested against what it described as an attempt by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to deny over 20 million Igbo voters in the Southeast region from collecting their Permanent Voters Card (PVCs).

The National President of the group, Chukwuma Orji, while addressing newsmen in Owerri, the Imo State capital also said that they perceived manipulation in the said number of registered voters being allocated to the Southeast.

They similarly raised an alarm that despite all appeals to INEC, to explain the complexities, they had been rebuffed by the officials of the commission.

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According to Orji “On the 19th of March, 2018, we wrote a letter to the Chairman of INEC, with the caption; ‘ALLOCATION OF 8,239, 093 (Eight Million Two Hundred Thirty Nine Thousand and Ninety – Three) as numbers of registered voters in the Southeast. In that letter, we demanded for clarification from the Commission about some numbers being associated with Southeast in the media as number of registered voters.”

They expressed worries that “as at today, the Commission has succeeded in endorsing the wild assumption, by agents of the Establishment that the Southeast is land locked and lacks votes to make a political statement. They did not stop there, they have invented and invested in technical disenfranchisement of eligible voters in Southeast.”

OCHIE mentioned the category of people to be affected to include, “People of the Southeast that applied for transfer of PVCs, “People from Southeast that lost their PVCs or whose PVCs were defaced, but applied for Replacement of same and those who applied for Correction of the names”.

They claimed that the commission has been avoiding having a meeting with OCHIE Igbo. “The last straw that broke the camel’s back was reaching INEC Director in charge of Voter Education and Publicity, Barr. Uzzi Uweye on phone. Uzzi’s arrogance and posturing are legendary. He talked down on us and warned us never to call his line”, the group claimed.

They therefore called on well-meaning Igbos to mobilize their various communities for a protest vote, for a candidate whose manifesto tallies with that which Ndigbo seeks.

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