2023: Get Your PVCs, Defend Your Votes, NAS Tells Nigerians

The National Association of Seadogs (NAS), Ogun State chapter, has urged Nigerians to get their Permanent Voter Cards and come out en masse to cast and monitor their votes so as to prevent cultists or political thugs from hijacking ballots at their polling units in the 2023 general election The State President of NAS, Adeyemi Omitogun, disclosed this at the association’s Feast Of Barracuda Public Lecture themed, ‘Gangsterism, Hooliganism and Cultism in Nigeria : Role of the Family’ held at Ash Montana Permanent Anchor Point, Gbonogun, Abeokuta, the state capital. At the event the Guest Speaker, Prof Adegbemi Onakoya, who was the former Secretary to Ogun State Government (SSG) under the Gbenga Daniel Administration, spoke virtually on the ills of cultism and hooliganism in the country, identifying economic sustainability as a solution to the problem. Encouraging Nigerians to exercise their franchise and stand by their votes after voting, Omitogun said that such action would not only hinder cultists or thugs employed by bad politicians from snatching away ballot boxes at their polling units but also make their votes count. He admonished the citizenry to bury the idea of ‘our vote don’t count’ which, according to him, would only give bad politicians using cultist and thugs to hijack ballot boxes the chance to perpetrate their evil acts and win elections. Omitogun also charged participants to go home and inform members of their families to go out and collect their PVCs and get registered to vote in the 2023 election, saying that NAS has an advocacy monitoring group whose duty is to ensure that votes count in any election. He pointed out economic sustainability and family role as major factors that could reduce the ills of cultism and gangsterism in the society, especially when fathers own up to their responsibility to inculcate morals in their children and advice them to shun cultism in schools.