YIAGA Africa, a civil society organisation (CSO), has requested that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) make available the information regarding voter registrations that have been found to be invalid.
In October 2022, INEC said that it has eliminated 2.7 million individuals from its database as a result of their improper registration.
At a media roundtable on Friday, Samson Itodo, the executive director of YIAGA, discussed the elections of 2023. In order to avoid making them wait in line to receive their permanent voter IDs, he claimed that INEC ought to have gotten in touch with those whose registrations were invalidated (PVCs).
Itodo claimed that more than two million records had been deleted by INEC.
“Now, these two million records of people are on a list, and INEC didn’t publish the list of these people, so these people whose records have been invalidated are not aware.
“So, they show up to the collection centres only to be told that their PVCs are not ready and they’ve been invalidated, when INEC should have published the list of invalidated records, so people know.
“INEC has the contact details of these persons and should contact these people so they don’t show up at the collection centres thinking their PVCs are there.”
He also asked the commission to do what it could to ensure that PVCs would be easy to get before the elections.
“Secondly, is the unprinted PVCs — that is people whose records have not been invalidated, but they show up and INEC informs that their PVCs are not ready and they are asked to come back in two weeks,” he said.
“We hope that their PVCs will be ready for the people at the end of these two weeks because people should get their PVCs to cast their vote.
“Based on our observation, the extension of the PVC collection is indeed a welcome development but looking at all these logistics and issues, if by the 29th, sufficient PVCs have not been collected, then INEC should consider a further extension of the PVC collection to enable people to collect their PVCs because Nigerians are determined to vote in the elections.”
The YIAGA executive director also stated that 3,014 observers would be sent out to all 774 LGAs and 48 mobile citizen observers.