Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, has disclosed that about 12 million Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) are yet to be collected.
He, however, assured that the Commission would devise a strategy to ensure the PVCs were distributed.
He made the disclosure on Friday at Garki Secondary School, Abuja while monitoring the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
He was accompanied by INEC officials and journalists.
The INEC Chairman said: “From the last general elections, we have 12 million PVCs uncollected, so we will have a mechanism sorted by the end of this year to ensure all those uncollected PVCs are distributed”.
Mahmood, who was impressed by the large turnout of eligible voters, said “the truth is that people have greater confidence in the electoral process, everybody wants to register and vote, our responsibility is to rise to the desire of Nigerians to be registered and vote”.
He disclosed that: “So far so good, from the record, 21,978 voters have registered in the last two days and that does not include today. Twelve thousand (12,000) are male and a little over nine thousand (9,000) are female”. He appealed to more female eligible voters to come out and register so they can participate in the electoral process.
Addressing the challenges faced by the FCT residents in the on-going CVR exercise, the INEC Chairman assured that: “we will do whatever it takes to ensure that Nigerians are empowered to vote. The power to vote is the possession of the PVC”.
He advised all those who have been previously registered to contact the INEC offices in their Local Government Area or INEC state offices for their PVCs and avoid multiple registrations as the Commission will not hesitate to detect and remove multiple registrants during de-duplication process. “If you have registered and you have not collected your PVC, the first thing is to see how to collect the PVC not to go and register again,” he said.
The on-going 5-day FCT CVR exercise was scheduled to hold from Wednesday, 13th January to Sunday, 17th of January 2016, ahead of the March 19 FCT Area Council elections.
