Tina Amanda
Reactions have trailed the statement made by the Senate committee on Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) led by Senator Suleiman Nazif.
The committee had during the weekend said that over four hundred thousand permanent voters card (PVC) are still unclaimed in Rivers state’s INEC office.
However, Head of Department of Voter’s Education and Publicity of INEC in Portharcourt, Edwin Enabor, told our reporter Tina Amanda, that the unclaimed PVCs are those of the 2011-2014 continuous voter’s registration exercise (CVR).
According to him, the commission is collaborating with stakeholders and ward chairmen to ensure that the unclaimed PVCs get to their rightful owners.
‘’The problem we have is with PVC cards of 2011-2014, nobody is coming to collect them and we are suspecting that this could be as a result of several factors.
“Either the owners are dead, or they did multiple registrations or the people got registered and they no longer live within the area of registration, they don’t see any need of coming back to collect the PVCs.
“we don’t want these cards lying there in the office, so we are taking the PVC cards to the people at the various ward levels through the assistance of stakeholders of various areas, to help us sensitize the people to come out and collect their cards, and so far it is yielding very good results”
He stressed that the commission is expecting over four hundred thousand PVCs from Abuja while urging the people who got registered between April – August 31st, 2018, to collect their PVCs from INEC offices.
“From the continuous voters’ registration exercise of April 2017 and March 2018, we have experienced good turn out of PVCs collection. Within this periods we have distributed about four hundred thousand PVCs and we are still expecting over four hundred thousand cards.
“Those who took the pain to register between April and August 31st, 2018, their cards will soon be ready and immediately it is ready we will announce it through the media.
“We urge the electorates to pick up their PVCs, the commission wants to make sure that nobody is disenfranchised. The election is just three months away and registration will go on at least a day to the election, so those who are yet to collect their PVCs should check INEC offices close to them‘’
