2015 ELECTIONS: One Month To Polls, INEC Yet To Distribute 15.3m PVCs

Professor Jega, INEC Chair

Denies Northern district heads collected PVCs for voters.

With 37 days to the presidential election, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) yesterday disclosed that 38.7 million Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) have been distributed nationwide out of the 54.3 million PVCs with the commission.

The development indicates that 15.3 million Nigerians are yet to receive their PVCs. INEC in a table which showed the breakdown of distributed PVCs as at yesterday, revealed that only 71.35 per cent of the PVCs have been distributed so far, according to Leadership.

The voter register contains 73 million eligible voters in the country. The commission had conducted the PVCs distribution across the 36 states in three phases. However, PVCs distribution in Ekiti and Osun states were done earlier in 2014 ahead of elections in those states.

According to the breakdown, Jigawa State has the highest number of PVCs distributed with 1,460,620 (94.12 percent) as against 1,551,831 received by INEC. Anambra State, however, scored the lowest percentage of distribution with 51.81, as out of 1,665,342 cards received by INEC, only 862,747 cards were distributed.

In Lagos, out of 4,000,000 cards received by INEC, only 2,159,091 have been distributed, which is 53.98 per cent. In Kano State, out of 3,198,859 cards received by INEC, 2,771,185 were distributed making 86.63 per cent. In Rivers State, out of 1,956,983 cards received, 1,253,606 were distributed, amounting to 64.06 per cent.

The display, however, did not show any figures collected or received for Borno State, due to the insurgency in the state. However, in Yobe State, 910,330 cards were received by INEC while 740,336 were distributed representing 81.33 per cent.

In Adamawa State, 1,529,636 cards were received by INEC, while 912,312 cards were distributed, representing 59.64 per cent.

The chief press secretary to the INEC chairman, Kayode Idowu, noted that the distribution of PVCs will continue at local government offices of INEC.

Explaining the distribution so far, he said, “The differences in levels of turn-out by people for their PVCs is not the making of INEC, since the commission has put in place the same procedure across the country guaranteeing equal access to persons wanting to collect their cards.”

“These figures are far from being final for the 2015 general election, since PVCs distribution by INEC continues until close to the elections.”

Idowu further denied reports that district heads in the North were allowed to collect PVCs on behalf of prospective voters, describing such allegations as “deliberate falsehood.”