Twelve (12) days to the Anambra Governorship election, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is yet to commence distribution of Permanent Voters Card (PVC) to eligible electorates in the state.
This is despite promises made by the commission that distribution of PVC will kick off on 7th October as INEC Continue to plan for the elections.
Recall that, INEC had said that the Permanent Voters’ Cards of the new registrants would be ready for collection on or shortly after October 7. The commission also said that registrants would be notified accordingly through their respective email addresses and telephone numbers when the PVCs are ready for collection.
INEC National Commissioner and Chairman (Information and Voter Education Committee), Festus Okoye, said this in a statement issued at the end of its review meeting preparatory to the conduct of the Anambra State governorship election scheduled for November 6 2021.
In Anambra State, a total of 138,802 citizens completed the registration, including applications for transfer and requests for replacement of lost, damaged or defaced PVCs as required by law. However, in the process of cleaning up the registration data, INEC said, it discovered that 62,698 persons who are already registered voters in Anambra State went ahead to register again.
Thus the new eligible CVR registrants stands at 77,475. However, this over 77,000 eligible voters have not been issued PVC and may be disenfranchised from participating in the election.
Findings by reveals that INEC had not abandoned plans to conduct the 2021 Anambra State Governorship election, despite the uncertainty over the election. Dispelling rumours of rescheduling the election, the INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, who spoke at an emergency meeting of the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES) in October, assured that the election will not be postponed.
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Thus citizens have continue to while questioning the preparedness of the electoral commission. Citizens took to their social media pages raising the concerns.
When our reporter reached out to INEC, the official who spoke under anonymity says the distribution of PVC will commence this week.
