800,000 PVCs Yet To Be Collected In Oyo State – INEC 

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*Says commission fully ready for 2023 polls

By; BAYO AKAMO, Ibadan

With few days to the 2023 general elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Oyo State, Dr. Adeniran Tella on Wednesday, hinted that 800,000 Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) are yet to collected in state.

Dr Tella who dropped this hint at a  stakeholders’ meeting on Mock Voters’ accreditation and verification exercise held at the commission’s office, Agodi  Ibadan, said the commission is fully ready for the coming election.

According to the REC, the purpose of the stakeholders forum is to inform the general public on the proposed mock voters’ accreditation/verification exercise in twelve(12)  of the polling units in three of the Senatorial Districts of the state.

” As you are already aware, the commission has taken delivery of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines for the election in the state. We have also tested each machine so as to ensure its functionality on election day”, he said.

Dr Tella added, ” the essence of the mock exercise is therefore to conduct field tests across three Senatorial Districts in the state using twelve polling units at Oyo North, Oyo South, and Oyo Senatorial Districts of the state.” 

” The exercise is scheduled for Saturday 4th of February 2023 from 8am to 2:30pm accordingly in all affected LGAs and polling units in the state”.

Speaking further, the REC tasked  registered voters in the affected polling units to appear on the scheduled date with their Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) for the mock exercise”,

” No doubt the exercise will help to reassure the general public of the robustness of our system and to further strengthen our processes ahead of the general election in the state. It should be noted that at the end of the exercise the 12 BVAS machines involved will be reconfigured before they are deployed for the general elections in the state”. 

Dr Tella stressed further that the commission ” is fully ready for the coming election as series of training are being conducted and will yet be conducted for both staff and ad-hoc staff members in order to have a seamless election in the state.”

He emphasized that,  “Presidential/National assembly election will hold on 25th of February 2023, while that of the governorship and state House of Assembly elections will come up on 11th March, 2023 as scheduled.” and that the commission ” is to deploy technology for the conduct of the forthcoming elections through the use of BVAS for accreditation and verification of voters and uploading poling units results through INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) on Election day.

“Collection of PVCs at the 33 INEC Offices has been further extended for 8 days with additional two hours which is expected to end on Sunday, 5th February 2023 starting from 9am to 5pm on daily basis, including Saturday and Sunday. As I speak to you we have so far distributed over 402,321 PVCs in the state. We still have over 800,000 uncollected PVCs at our various 33 INEC local government area offices, I urge members of the public to have their PVCs collected today because their PVC is their power on election day.”.

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