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Abuja residents express frustration over collection of PVCs

By Matthew Ogune (Abuja) and Charles Otu (Abakaliki)
07 February 2019   |   4:23 am
Some residents of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja have expressed outrage against the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over its failure to provide their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) six months after registration. Speaking to The Guardian, they said INEC officials told them that their cards were omitted during production and were asked to fill…

[FILES] FCT Abuja

Some residents of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja have expressed outrage against the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over its failure to provide their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) six months after registration.

Speaking to The Guardian, they said INEC officials told them that their cards were omitted during production and were asked to fill incident form after which they kept visiting the commission’s accredited centres to no avail.

They said the officials kept posting them for over five months since the issuance of the cards began.

A resident, Christian Eze, told The Guardian yesterday at INEC Women Centre in Gwa-Gwa, Abuja, that collecting the card was so frustrating that he could no longer continue with the process, adding that he had been making effort to collect the card for the past three months without success.

Another resident, Chinelo Ugwu, stated that there was no gain passing through a cumbersome process of registration, if she could not collect the PVC that qualifies her to exercise her right to vote in the elections.

On his part, Victor Efe Uvwebiepha, noted that INEC’s inability to produce enough of the cards was a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise some persons or groups in the society.

He urged government to make the process more flexible to enable eligible voters participate in the forthcoming elections.

However, INEC in Ebonyi State yesterday said it has created additional voting points to accommodate increase in the number of voters during the continuous voter registration in the state.

Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Professor Godswill Obioma, made the disclosure while addressing the last stakeholders meeting to show its readiness for the 2019 election in Abakaliki.

The commission met with Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), European Election Observer Group, political parties, town unions and Church leaders.

Obioma, who maintained that the commission recorded some successes during the Continuous Voter Registration exercise in the state, affirmed that it increased the number of polling stations from 1,700 in 2015 to 2,245.

He, however, expressed concern over the 168,000 uncollected PVCs in the state, adding: “But we have recorded some successes in the distribution because over 20,000 PVCs have been collected by their owners, as a result of the strategies we devised to reach more prospective voters.”

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