Mr Paul Atser, INEC Administrative Secretary in Kwara has said that the commission has registered a total of 104, 388 people in Kwara for the Permanent Voter Card (PVC) since the commencement of the exercise in April 2017.
Atser made this known during a meeting he had with stakeholders on Friday in Ilorin.
Representatives of the Police, Customs, immigration, Prisons services, Civil Defense and Directorate of State Security attended the meeting.
Also in attendance were representatives of all the registered political parties in the state, women societies, nongovernmental organizations, State Chairman of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), NYSC and people with disability.
The Administrative Secretary said the Commission has taken delivery of 10, 221 new PVCs from the headquarters, adding that many will be delivered to the commission very soon.
He expressed happiness that the 242, 000 uncollected old PVCs has been depleted as 4, 388 have been collected by their owners remaining 238, 000 yet to be collected.
Atser therefore called on those who registered for PVC since 2015 to visit INEC registration centers to collect their PVCs.
He said the new PVCs received will be ready for collection as from Monday, May 21 throughout the country and were for those that registered in 2017 either for new PVC, loss of PVC, damaged PVC or transfer PVC.
The Administrative Secretary however declared that there would not be collection by proxy as everybody that registered must come physically to collect their cards.
According to him, anybody that want to collect the new PVC have to come to the center with the Temporary Voter Card (TVC) as evidence before collection.
He added that anybody that have lost his or her TVC, will need to fill a form after checking the register for his or photograph to confirm that the person was the owner of the card.
The Admin Secretary said that to ease collection of the PVC, INEC Registration Officers will carry the card to anywhere the registration exercise was taking place.
Atser added that to facilitate registration of people for the PVC, additional 16 centers were created to the initial 16 making it a total of 32.
He also said that 16 additional Data Capturing machines were deployed to the state to speed up the registration exercise in the state.
Atser commended the stakeholders, particularly political parties for the cooperation the commission has been enjoying and making Kwara peaceful.
In his comment, Akogun Iyiola Oyedepo, PDP chairman, made a case for more polling units in new residential communities in Ilorin.
He said that many communities were springing up in the state capital as a result of influx of people, adding that these communities have no polling units and may be disenfranchised in 2019.
NLC chairman, Comrade Yekini Agunbiade also spoke about inadequate Registration centers in the state.
He also drew the attention of INEC to the fact that after electing Dr Mike Omotosho as the National Chairman of the Labour Party (LP), the Commission was yet to effect the change on its web site.
Chairman of Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC) in the state, Comrade Abdul-Mumeen Onagun, who is also the Labour Party (LP) Chairman, commended the openness of the state office of INEC in handling all issues relating to political parties and creating a level playground
all the time.
Onagun noted that in spite of INEC’s efforts, the number of the registration centers were still “grossly inadequate” and very far from the registrants.
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