Ahead of the 2023 general election, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has reassured that Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) for all valid registrants would be available for collection by the end of October/early November.
Festus Okoye, INEC national commissioner and chairman, information and voter education committee, disclosed this in a statement on Monday, saying a thorough process was being undertaken to clean up the registration data.
Okoye said the cleaning up of the register of voters, using the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) commenced since the suspension of the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) on July 13, 2022.
Read also: Registered voters accuse INEC of frustrating PVC collection
“Earlier, the commission informed Nigerians that out of the 2, 523,458 fresh registrants that registered between June 28, 2021 and January 14, 2022, about 1,126,359 records were found to be invalid and consequently delisted.
“The ABIS for the period – January 15 to July 31, 2022 is almost completed. Several double, multiple and ineligible registrants have also been detected and invalidated. These include entries that fail to meet the commission’s business rules. The commission takes this responsibility seriously because a credible register is at the heart of electoral integrity.
“As soon as the process is concluded, the commission will provide the public with full information as usual. Thereafter, valid registrants will be added to the existing national register of voters before publishing the same nationwide for scrutiny, claims and objections by citizens as required by section 19 (1) of the Electoral Act 2022,” he added.
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