TheCable

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says the printing of permanent voter cards (PVCs) for new registrants has been delayed due to the clean-up of the voters’ register.

Mahmood Yakubu, INEC chairman, disclosed this on Monday at the five-day induction retreat for national commissioners in Lagos.

The cleaning of the voters’ register is done to remove names of dead persons, non-Nigerians who may have been registered, as well as other categories of ineligible persons.

The INEC chairman said the commission is encouraged by the response of citizens on the ongoing continuous voter registration (CVR) exercise, adding that he’s aware of the delay in the printing of PVCs.

“Millions of Nigerians have registered so far and we have been giving weekly updates of the progress of the exercise for the last nine months,” NAN quoted him as saying.

“The commission is aware that new registrants as well as those who applied for transfer or replacement of the PVCs will like to know when the cards will be available for collection.

“The reason why we have not made the PVCs available is because of the robust system of cleaning up the registration to ensure that only genuine registrants are added to the voters’ register using the automatic bimodal identification system (ABIS) for fingerprint and facial clean-up.”

The chairman said INEC had completed the ABIS for the first and second quarter of the CVR exercise, adding that the commission would meet next week after which details PVC collection would be announced.

He reassured Nigerians of INEC’s commitment to credible polls in 2023, adding that the commission had concluded work on the strategic plan for the 2023 general election.

Yakubu also said INEC will finalise work on the regulations and guidelines for elections taking into consideration the provisions of the electoral act 2022.

“The three documents will be published and presented to the public in April,” he said.

“May I also seize this opportunity to reassure Nigerians that we have identified the challenges associated with the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS) during voter accreditation.

“The commission is also working on the distribution of voters to polling units across the country, following the successful expansion of voter access to polling units.

“Very soon, we will roll out the plan for achieving a more balanced distribution of voters to the polling units.”