The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said it was able to distribute 125,928 out of 184,438 new Permanent Voter’s Cards (PVCs) available for the September 21 Edo State governorship election.
The commission explained that the figure, which represents 68.3 per cent of the total number, is the highest percentage of PVCs collected in five days since it introduced the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) ahead of off-cycle governorship elections in 2015.
INEC National Commissioner in charge Information and Voter Education Committee, Sam Olumekun, in a statement, also disclosed that INEC will
test run the deployment of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and result upload to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal for the election using live voters in select locations in the state.
Olumekun recalled that the commission began PVCs distribution in all the 192 wards from Thursday 22nd to Monday 26th August, later in our 18 local government area offices.
“The commission is pleased to announce the conclusion of the collection at ward level.
“Learning from the lessons of previous collection of PVCs, the commission has carefully packaged all the PVCs by poling units, wards and LGAs.
“We also produced the collection register, providing details of the voters whose cards were ready for collection and uploaded same to our website,” he stated.
The National Commissioner added that INEC has contacted the owners using the addresses provided at the time of registration, disclosing that the collection will resume in the 18 LGA offices in Edo State from Wednesday August 28 and end on Sunday September 8.
He stated 12 polling units across six LGAs covering the three senatorial districts of Edo State, have been designated as centres for the mock accreditation.
Olumekun appealed to registered voters to come out with their PVCs for the exercise.
“Please note that only registered voters for the designated polling units are invited to participate in the exercise. No voter from another polling unit can be accredited by the BVAS,” he emphasised.