According to reports, no fewer than 6.7 million Nigerians have yet to collect their permanent voter cards less than eigth weeks to the general elections.
Data obtained from the state offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission on Tuesday revealed that 6.7 m PVCs were locked up in INEC safes across 17 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
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The INEC had announced that the collection window for PVCs will commence December 12,2022 and end on January 22.
The INEC National Commissioner for Information and Voter Education, Festus Okoye, disclosed in a statement that with effect from January 6 -15,2023 the collection of the PVCs will be devolved to the ward level after which collection would be moved to the local government areas.
Past elections were marred by voters’ apathy.
During the 2019 general elections, the INEC said it had about 82.3m registered voters, however only 28.6m voted in the polls which resulted in the re-election of President Muhammadu Buhari who polled 15m to defeat his closest rival, Atiku Abubakar, who scored 11.2m votes.
Data from the Lagos state INEC office revealed that as of December 29, a total of 1,693,963 PVCs remained uncollected. This was disclosed in a document tagged ‘INEC Lagos PVCs Reports.’
It stated;
Old PVCs received from headquarters – 6,570,291; old PVCs collected up till December 29, 2022 – 5,653,330. Total uncollected old PVCs – 916,961; New PVCs received from headquarters – 940,200; New PVCs collected as at December 29, 2022 – 163,198.
Total uncollected New PVCs –777,022; Overall total PVCs received from headquarters- 7,510,491; Overall PVCs collected as at December 29, 2022 -5,816,528; Overall PVCs uncollected 1,693,963.
Findings indicate that the FCT has 460,643 uncollected PVCs as of December 24.
A document obtained from INEC revealed that the Abuja Municipal Area Council had the highest number of uncollected PVCs in the FCT.
In Edo state, 661,783 voter cards have not been collected as of December 29 while
Ondo and Ekiti states had 300,000 and 205,127 cards, respectively, as of December 15.
