2019 Election: 8 Million People Have Not Collected Their PVCs, INEC Speaks Out

Barely five weeks to the start of this year’s general election, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said about eight million would-be voters are yet to pick up their permanent voter card (PVC). One of INEC’s National Commissioner.

Dr. Mohammed Lecky, disclosed this during an interview with THISDAY on Saturday while reaffirming the commission’s commitment to the prevention of electoral fraud.

Lecky also said the commission had no intention of re-introducing the controversial incidence forms in the February and March elections.

He said, “In fact, the use of the incidence form has been completely abrogated. It is no longer part of INEC’s regulations and guidelines. So, that is the position. There is no re-introduction of the incidence form, contrary to what the media had reported recently.

“First and foremost, INEC is a very responsive agency and once people raised the objection and following the review of the 2015 general election, a number of observers, like the CSOs, NGOs and international organisations, had made recommendations on how to improve and we have to respond to them. One of the things they recommended is that we have to do away with the incidence form because it could be susceptible to all manner of abuses and we don’t want to give chance to those abuses to either occur or give a perception to their occurrence.”

Regarding the number of PVCs yet to be collected, the INEC national commissioner said, “There is no state in the country where we have achieved 100 per cent distribution of PVC. The distribution of PVC is the biggest headache for us. We need the media to help us encourage the people to come and collect their PVCs. People are not coming forward to pick their PVCs. We have about eight million PVCs yet to be collected by Nigerians.”