Lots of Nigerians have collected their PVCs – INEC

As the deadline for the collection of Permanent Voters Card (PVCs) end on Monday, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said lots of registered voters have collected their PVCs to enable them vote in the coming general elections.

The commission’s National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, told Daily Trust on Monday night that INEC has done everything possible to ensure that Nigerians who registered during the continuous voters’ exercise collected their voters’ card.

“Recall that INEC had earlier set the 8th of February as the deadline, but the commission really wanted people to collect their PVCs, we have to extend it till today being the 11th February.

“We believe that sufficient numbers of Nigerians have collected their PVCs. We also acknowledged that there were some challenges for the collection by some people.

“Since the collection cannot continue non-stop, we have to stop at this particular period to enable us focus principally and fundamentally on the February 16 Presidential and National Assembly elections and also to recall all uncollected PVCs, give account of them and deposit them with the Central Bank.

“We have done reasonably well; we still acknowledged that there were some challenges and the PVC collection will continue after the elections,” Okoye said.

According to him, it will not be possible to get the number of those that collected their PVCs and also what remained uncollected as at Monday expiration.

“By tomorrow (today), all local governments are expected to mop-up uncollected PVCs and forward them the Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) and thereafter give us the number.

“We would then tell Nigerians the number of uncollected PVCs and deposit them in the Central Banks (offices) of each states of the federation. We urged Nigerians to bear with us as we have all we could to ensure that they collect their PVCs and immediately after the elections, the collection will resume,” he said.

The Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, had told newsmen last Friday at a regular meeting with the RECs in Abuja, that the commission has taken the decision that the collection of PVCs scheduled to end on Friday 8th February 2019 be extended nationwide to Monday 11th February 2019, to include Saturday and Sunday from 9am to 6pm daily.