Ahead of the Edo state gubernatorial election, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said 125,928 of the 184,438 newly printed Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) have been collected in the state.
This was stated by INEC’s National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, Mr Sam Olumekun, in a statement on Tuesday in Abuja.
According to him, the PVC collection represents 68.3 per cent of the 184,438 new cards issued during the recent Continuous Voter Registration exercise.
“This marks the highest collection rate recorded by INEC since the introduction of CVR for off-cycle governorship elections in 2015.
“The collection, which took place across all 192 wards in Edo State between Aug. 22 and Aug. 26, was achieved through a carefully coordinated effort by INEC.
“The commission is pleased to announce the conclusion of the collection at Ward level. Learning from the lessons of the 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 said.
Olumekun stated that a complete breakdown of the collection by LGAs has been posted on the INEC website and various media channels for public viewing. He also stated that collection would resume in all INEC offices in Edo’s 18 LGAs beginning Wednesday and ending September 8. Olumekun urged the remaining voters to pick collect their PVCs from INEC LGA offices.
“Let me reiterate INEC’s policy that no cards should be collected by proxy,” adding that detailed information on the locations of INEC LGAs offices was already available on the commission’s website.
