The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it
is working towards ensuring a “robust” register of voters for the 2023
elections.
Festus Okoye, INEC national commissioner for information,
said this on Friday during a programme on Channels Television.
He also said efforts are ongoing to weed out foreigners and
underage persons from the register of voters.
“On the issue of underage voters, this commission published
the entire voters’ register in Nigeria in the various local government areas
and in all the registration areas, and people have made their objections.
People have made their complaints and people have made their claims,” Okoye
said.
“The commission is
presently cleaning up the voters’ register. The clean-up is an ongoing exercise
and we are going to try our best to make sure that we go into the 2023 general
election with a voters’ register that Nigerians can be proud of, and also with
a voters’ register that is robust.
“In terms of non-Nigerians voting, only validly registered
voters will be in a position to vote during the 2023 general election, and the
immigration service, anytime they make any arrest, anytime they see any
individual who claims to be a Nigerian who has a voter’s card, they make those
arrests, make those voter cards available to the commission, and we cancel
those registrations.
“So, Nigerians should be on the lookout.”
Speaking on the ongoing PVC distribution exercise, Okoye
described the turnout as “encouraging”.
“The rate of PVC collection varies from one state to the
other and from one place to the other. Some of the resident electoral
commissioners are sending daily reports to the commission; some of them are
sending reports every two days; some are sending every week. So, we are still
collating these reports,” he said.
“The national commissioners are also supervising the
collection of PVCs in the states that they supervise. But as of today, we are
really encouraged by the turnout of people coming to collect.
“Community leaders are mobilising; market women are
mobilising; religious leaders and traditional leaders are also mobilising, and
people are coming out to collect their PVCs.”
The national commissioner also said the electoral body has
made provisions for internally displaced persons (IDPs) to participate in the
forthcoming elections.
“We have profiled all the persons in IDP camps. We know the
number of persons in IDP camps, and we know the number of IDP camps in various
states,” he said.
“So, we are going to configure all the IDP camps into
registration areas and all persons who are in IDP camps who want to vote will
have an opportunity to vote.”
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