Yemi Adedeji, Abuja
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said Continuous Voters Registration (CVR) will end in the middle of August, to afford it enough time to process data collected during the exercise and for the production of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).
The decision was reached after Mahmood Yakubu,, Chairman of INEC met with the Civil society organisations (CSOs) and media during the quarterly meeting in Abuja.
Though, the Electoral Amended Act 2010 as amended states that, “the registration of voters, updating and revision of voter under this section shall stop not later than 60 days before any election covered by this Act.”
This empowers the Commission to stop the registration of voter, updating and revision of the register anytime before 15 December, 2018, which amount to 60 days to the commencement of the 2019 general elections, scheduled for 16 February, 2019.
According to him, “it is important to note that the processing of data collected during the CVR exercise, leading to the production of PVCs takes time. It also takes time to produce PVCs of persons on the register of voters but whose PVCs were not hitherto produced to the reproduce PVCs emanating from request for transfers (intra and inter state), defaced and lost PVCs.”
Continuing he added that, “from previous experience, the timeline required from the close of registration to point of PVC production and issuance of PVC to respective voters is about 120. This time span is required for the purpose of claims and objections and other blackened activities, including rerunning Business Rules and AFIS.
“Another 30 days is required from the date of PVC production to the point of issuance to registered voters for the purpose of quality assurance, packaging and movement from the central stroke to respective States and local government areas.”
Yakubu noted that required time for claims and objections on the voter register leading to the production of clean and credible national register of voters for the 2019 election was als part of the reasons why the commission is seeking discontinuation of the CVR exercise.
He stated categorically that since INEC has done CVR in Osun and Ekiti states, “we are not going to do another one until after the 2019 general elections.”