TheCable

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it will shut down the continuous voter registration (CVR) online portal in April.

Festus Okoye, INEC national commissioner in charge of information and voter education, said this on Thursday in an interview with NAN.

INEC had said the online pre-registration and physical registration will subsist simultaneously until the CVR exercise is suspended on June 30, 2022.

But speaking on Thursday, Okoye said shutting down the portal is necessary for INEC to clear those who have done the online pre-registration for the purpose of capturing their biometrics at physical centres.

“We are going to shut down the online portal latest by April, but the physical registration will go on until June,” he said.

“After June, the possibility of extending the CVR process is next to impossible, because we have to clean up the register, do claims and objections, and we have to print PVCs.

“People have to collect PVCs and we have to give every registered political party the voters’ register that will be used for the 2023 general election.

“The law has obligated us to stop everything relating to voter registration at a particularly point in time.”

Okoye also said millions of Nigerians were yet to collect their PVCs.

“In a place like Lagos and in other states, we have so many PVCs that have remained uncollected from previous registration and we want people to access these voter cards,” he said.

“There are millions of PVCs yet to be collected nationwide. In fact, in Lagos state, we have over a million PVCs that have not been collected and this varies from state to state.

“We have millions of PVCs that have not been collected by those who registered since 2011 up till this time.”

According to him, after some time, the commission will deposit the uncollected PVCs in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to ensure that they do not fall into wrong hands.