TheCable

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it is working towards ensuring a “robust” register of voters for the 2023 elections.

Festus Okoye, INEC national commissioner for information, said this on Friday during a programme on Channels Television.

He also said efforts are ongoing to weed out foreigners and underage persons from the register of voters.

“On the issue of underage voters, this commission published the entire voters’ register in Nigeria in the various local government areas and in all the registration areas, and people have made their objections. People have made their complaints and people have made their claims,” Okoye said.

“The commission is presently cleaning up the voters’ register. The clean-up is an ongoing exercise and we are going to try our best to make sure that we go into the 2023 general election with a voters’ register that Nigerians can be proud of, and also with a voters’ register that is robust.

“In terms of non-Nigerians voting, only validly registered voters will be in a position to vote during the 2023 general election, and the immigration service, anytime they make any arrest, anytime they see any individual who claims to be a Nigerian who has a voter’s card, they make those arrests, make those voter cards available to the commission, and we cancel those registrations.

“So, Nigerians should be on the lookout.”

Speaking on the ongoing PVC distribution exercise, Okoye described the turnout as “encouraging”.

“The rate of PVC collection varies from one state to the other and from one place to the other. Some of the resident electoral commissioners are sending daily reports to the commission; some of them are sending reports every two days; some are sending every week. So, we are still collating these reports,” he said.

“The national commissioners are also supervising the collection of PVCs in the states that they supervise. But as of today, we are really encouraged by the turnout of people coming to collect.

“Community leaders are mobilising; market women are mobilising; religious leaders and traditional leaders are also mobilising, and people are coming out to collect their PVCs.”

The national commissioner also said the electoral body has made provisions for internally displaced persons (IDPs) to participate in the forthcoming elections.

“We have profiled all the persons in IDP camps. We know the number of persons in IDP camps, and we know the number of IDP camps in various states,” he said.

“So, we are going to configure all the IDP camps into registration areas and all persons who are in IDP camps who want to vote will have an opportunity to vote.”