The Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission Prof. Mahmud Yakubu, while speaking at the commission’s first quarterly consultative meeting with the media in Abuja on Monday said that the commission has not distributed a total of 7.8 million permanent voters cards from the 2015 election.
Yakubu said that the commission had only been able to distribute over 700,000 PVCs since 2015.
He said that the leadership of the commission had directed the resident electoral commissioners and the administrative secretaries to commence immediate distribution of the uncollected PVCs in the country.
According to him, the members of staff of the commission would carry out the exercise in a way that the PVCs would all get to the owners.
The INEC’s Chairman also said that it was imperative for the commission to clean up the voters register ahead of the 2019 elections to ensure the registration of Nigerians who are of age and those who did not register in 2015.
Yakubu added that apart of the prevalent problem of underage voters in the country, the commission was also facing the issue of underage candidates.
He said, “We need to clean up the voters register but we need to move carefully and properly. We need to have continuos voters registration, to register Nigerians who are of age and those whose did not register in 2015.
About 7. 8 million PVCs are uncollected from the last general elections. We have done an audit of all uncollected PVCs and in one of our meetings with RECs and administrative secretaries, we gave them marching orders to begin to distribute them.
Posted by Juliet Ekwebelam (Source: Punch)
