Date: 2018-02-27

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Monday said that over seven million Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) had yet to be collected nationwide by their owners.

Alhaji Mohammed Haruna, INEC National Commissioner in charge of North Central, made this known in Ilorin while speaking with journalists.

Haruna was in Kwara to assess the progress of Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) in the state.

The national commissioner also disclosed that 239, 000 PVCs had yet to be collected in Kwara.

He said that all PVCs of voters who registered between 2017 and now would be ready for collection in April.

He said that the commission would do everything to ensure that all the PVCs were collected by their owners before the 2019 general elections.

"Before the commencement of 2019 general elections, all the PVC will be ready; our problem is collection because we do not have facilities for distribution.

"We have close to eight million uncollected PVCs across the country and it will not be nice to disenfranchise these numbers of voters," Haruna added.

The national commissioner said INEC had put some measures in place to ensure that registered collected their PVCs.

Haruna said registration of voters would be rotated among the wards in the state during which ready PVCs would be distributed to the owners.

He appealed to those that had registered since the commencement of the exercise to check with their registration centers for collection of the cards. He expressed concern over the long queues of prospective registered voters in Ilorin West Local Government, adding that the commission would do everything possible to improve on the situation.

According to him, INEC had procured and distributed new Direct Data Capturing machines (DDC) to all the 36 states of the federation and Abuja to ease registration of voters.

Haruna said 10 DDC machines were allocated to Kwara, adding that Ilorin West Local Government was allocated one to ease the registration procedure.

The Electoral Officer in Ilorin West, Alhaji Abu Oman Uffene, had earlier appealed to the national commissioner for more DDC machine to ease the exercise in the area.

He said Ilorin West, being a metropolitan local government area, was the most populous in the state hence the influx of prospective voters.