Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega has announced that the commission has registered a total number of 68,833,476 voters for the February general elections. He said that over four million Nigerians who were involved in multiple registrations across the country had had their names struck out of the register.
Professor Jega, who spoke today at the meeting with national leadership of all the 23 registered political parties in Abuja said: “in line with the provisions of the law, the commission has just announced the publications of the register of voters that will be used for the February 2015 general elections.
“The total number of voters registered for the elections is 68,833,476.”
Jega said that over four million Nigerians were involved in double registration and that because of this, their names had been deleted from the register.
He said 38,774,391 Nigerians had collected their Permanent Voter Cards out of the 54,341,610 that were ready as at Monday last week.
He, however, said that the commission had ordered more PVCs and that some of them are already waiting for collection.
“The commission has taken delivery of additional PVCs from the contractor, and we are positive that we will have all outstanding cards with us by 28 January, 2015.
“For the avoidance of doubt, possession of PVCs is a strict condition for anyone intending to vote in the 2015 elections.”
Asked about the resolutions passed by the House of Representatives, asking the commission to use TVCs, he said he was not aware of such resolution.
He said however that the commission is working with the intent of using only PVCs for the elections.
Professor Jega regretted that many Nigerians refused to collect their PVCs, adding that in order to address this, the commission had directed all resident electoral commissioners to further decentralise the distribution of the cards to the ward level.
The time for the distribution, he added, had also been fixed from 8.30am to 5.30pm, from Monday to Saturday.
He said that contrary to the doubt being entertained in some quarters, the electoral umpire would use card readers for the elections.
“INEC will use card readers for the elections. Th commission has taken delivery of more than 130,000 units of these card readers, and we are on schedule to receive the remaining quantity before the end of January.”
He announced that deployment of the cards to states had commenced, adding that there are about 150,000 polling points in the country. [myad]
