INEC: Continuous Voters Registration Ends in August

Adedayo Akinwale

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Thursday said Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) would end in the middle of August, to afford it enough time to process data collected during the exercise and for the production of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).

The decision was reached at a quarterly consultative meeting held with the Civil society organisations (CSOs) and the media in Abuja organised by INEC.

Though, the Electoral Act 2010 as amended states that, "the registration of voters, updating and revision of voter under this section shall stop not later than 60 days before any election covered by this Act."

This empowers the Commission to stop the registration of voter, updating and revision of the register any time before 15 December, 2018, which amount to 60 days to the commencement of the 2019 general elections, scheduled for 16 February, 2019.

The chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, said: "It is important to note that the processing of data collected during the CVR exercise, leading to the production of PVCs takes time. It also takes time to produce PVCs of persons on the register of voters but whose PVCs were not hitherto produced to the reproduce PVCs emanating from request for transfers (intra and inter-state), defaced and lost PVCs."