INEC Plans To Adopt Roving Method In CVR/PVCs Collection

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has stated that it would adopt a roving method in the coming days in the registration and collection of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) in Rivers State.
The INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mr Obo Effanga disclosed this during a radio and current affairs programme known as View Point.
Effanga stated that INEC would embark on aggressive distribution of the PVCs across Rivers State before the August 17 deadline to end the exercise.
“Depending on the size of the Local Government Area in the state in terms of land mass and then their population. We may have one or two other locations where it is going on, but it is happening everyday all the time, permanently in the Local Government offices of INEC, but apart from this, there is something going on that we are doing, may be that is what somebody mistaken for house-to-house distribution. So apart from this fixed locations that you can do this CVR, there is also provision to route from location to location as agreed with the stakeholders in that LGA.
“So they have a schedule that they agree on, that we can say for instance, for the next five days we will be in this particular community in this local government area for people to come and register or collect their PVCs. Aside from the permanent ones that is going on,” Effanga added.
The INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner described the process as a mobile exercise in giving all those who have attained the age of eighteen (18) years and above the opportunity to register, noting that the exercise would now be a daily exercise from 9am to 5pm everyday of the week.
“But remember we are talking about continuous voter registration exercise, it is not fresh registration. The point is that before now INEC has about 69million register voters across the country and like I said Rivers State has about 2.5million registered already before now, so all we are trying to do is to mop up those people who didn’t have the opportunity of registering, people, who for instance have turned 18 years old now and this process started since April last year.
“When we started we were doing this Monday to Friday on work days from 9am to 3pm, but now we have decided that it should be everyday of the week just so that everybody have an opportunity and so there would not be an excuse even though there is public holiday, we will still do it and it will be from 9am to 5pm”, the electoral commissioner said.

Susan Serekara-Nwikhana