INEC Insists On July 31 Deadline For Voters’ Registration

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said that the July 31 deadline for Continuous Voters Registration (CVR) won’t be extended.

INEC’s Resident Electoral Commissioner for FCT, Alhaji Yahaya Bello who spoke at a news conference on the commission’s state of preparedness for the 2023 general elections, also revealed that those who register more than once would not get their Permanent Voter’s Card.

Bello said that all CVR activities except the collection of already printed PVCs would be suspended on Sunday, July 31.

According to him, the commission had increased the closing hours to 5pm daily including Saturdays and Sundays to accommodate the reawaking of those who now realised that they need their PVCs at the last hour of the programme that has been ongoing for over a year.

Bello said; 

“The number of people who registered and whose registration has been invalidated is becoming alarming; a lot of people have registered in one or two registration centres.

“They will get nothing by doing so whatever their intentions were because, at the end of the day, they will be declared as people without PVC at all.

“Any double or triple registration is null and void. We will go through our machines after this exercise and clean our register so that we can come up with a list of people who genuinely are going to vote in 2023.

“So let me appeal to people that they should always tell our staff at registration centres exactly what they want to do, whether they have never registered before, they have lost their cards or it is defaced, or they want a transfer from one place to another.’’