Elections: Ensure your registration is updated on INEC’s portal, Yiaga Africa tasks voters

A civil society organisation, Yiaga Africa, has tasked eligible voters to ensure that their registration is updated on the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) online portal of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The group’s Director of Programmes, Cynthia Mbamalu, made the appeal on a Twitter Spaces session organised by Yiaga Africa and Daily Trust, one of its partners, on Thursday,

The spaces, which kicked off on Thursday, would run daily (8pm to 9pm) till the general elections.

Earlier in the day, INEC announced the commencement of the distribution of Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) to registrants at the 8,809 electoral wards across Nigeria.

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Speaking, Mbamalu said, “INEC deregistered multiple registrants or invalid registration last year, 2022, while about 2 million plus were cleaned up from the register and however, most of these individuals do not know that their names are not in the register.

“So, there’s a likelihood that some individuals who may have approached INEC for their PVCs are told their PVCs were not ready. Maybe one of those whose details were cleaned off from the register.

“Now what this means is that… There are two scenarios here. If there were some voters, what they wanted to achieve was to transfer their registration from their previous location to a new place of residence or to update their voter register. And also those who wanted to replace their permanent voters card and because of poor communication, rather than transferring, updating or replacing, conducted rather than did a new registration.

“Now what INEC did was to clean out the new registration. So what this means is that for these voters, there is likelihood that their PVCs will be in their original place of post registration. So, if they are registered in 2018 before and let’s say they registered in local government A and were hoping to move it to local government B where they did their new registration, it means they would not find their PVCs in local government B but in local government A because the information written in the register is their previous registration data.

“So, this is also a possible likelihood and is important for voters experiencing some of these challenges to also confirm and be sure that their registration has been updated on the INEC CVR portal, that way you will also know if you are going to the right place to seek for your PVC.”

During the spaces, some social media users spoke on the challenges encountered while collecting their PVCs.

One of the speakers with the handle @jabz_man, said more awareness needs to be carried out to keep the masses informed.

“When there is communication gap, people wouldn’t be aware that the collection is ongoing in wards. So, CSOs should do well by mobilising people to get their PVCs,” he said.

On her part, @Igbo_blessing advised that, “During PVCs collection, it is advisable to check with all of the names. A friend of mine had an issue collecting hers because they checked with one of her names. It got resolved after they checked with her last name. So, If they check with one of the names, it’s just proper that they check with all of the names.”