Nigeria no longer needs PVCs for elections — Yiaga Africa

The Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo, has said that with the introduction of the Bi-Modal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), there is no need to use the Permanent Voters Card (PVC) during elections.

Itodo said BVAS should have cancelled the use of PVC in the country’s elections, calling for electoral laws to be updated to capture the new realities.

He disclosed this while speaking on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics about the forthcoming Edo and Ondo governorship elections later in the year.

He raised the concern that most of the 269,000 intending voters who recently registered might not get their PVCs before the elections in Edo and Ondo.

He posited that once a voter has any means of identification, be it a national identity card, driver’s license, or passport, and their name is on the register, they should be able to vote.

“In the 2023 elections, there were people who registered but could not collect their PVCs before the elections, so they could not vote, and that is an infringement on the rights of those people.

“This whole process where we disenfranchise people on the basis of not securing a PVC, not because of their own doing but because there are some logistical issues on the part of the electoral commission, so these people don’t cast their votes.

“We have been advocating that we don’t need PVCs anymore for elections. I don’t understand why we are using the PVCs for elections when we have a BIVAS that functions optimally for voters’ accreditation,” he said.