“PVC Collections Officially Starts Today,” – INEC

Festus Okoye, the Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and Chairman of Information and Voter Education, has announced that the Permanent Voter’s Card (PVC) distribution will start today, December 12.

Okoye said the commission had convened to examine a number of issues regarding the 2023 general election, including PVC, during a discussion with the Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) from the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

He added that Nigerians can pick up their PVCs every day, including Saturdays and Sundays, between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.

The commission has authorized the collection of PVCs in 8,809 Registration Areas/Wards around the nation in an effort to reduce challenges with PVC collection.

He said: “After January 15, 2023, the exercise will revert to the local government offices of the commission until January 22, 2023.

“Those who are unable to collect their PVCs at the local government offices of the commission can do so at the Registration Areas/Electoral Wards.

“INEC had held a retreat in Lagos with its Administrative Secretaries and RECs from the 36 states of the federation and the FCT between November 28 and December 2, 2022.

“At the retreat, the commission finalised the procedure as well as the timetable for collection of PVCs.”

The Independent Electoral Commission had announced that 1,126,359 of the 2,523,458 Permanent Voters Cards that were registered online between June and December 2021 are invalid.

The information was provided to reporters on May 13th in an interview at the office of Prof. Sa’idu Babura, the Resident Electoral Commissioner in charge of the Zamfara State.

He said, “After the authentication exercise, it was discovered that out of the 2,523,458 registrants nationwide, 1,390,519 are valid while 1,126,359 are invalid.

“This means that 44.6% of all those registered between June and December 2021 are multiple registrations.”

Festus Okoye also stated that more invalid registrants have been detected during the screening of the database after the July 31st deadline.