As the 2023 general elections draw near, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has asked newly registered voters and voters who applied for transfer or replacement of Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) to get set to collect their PVCs from 12th December. It will be recalled that INEC conducted the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise between June 2021 and July 2022, which saw over 12 million new voters registered. However, after deleting over 2.7 million invalid registrations, a total of 9, 518,188 newly registered voters remained.
The collection exercise will commence at INEC Local Government Offices. Collection will be taken to the Ward level between 6th and 15th January 2023 for those who are unable to collect theirs at the Local Government level and will revert to the Local Government level from 16th January until the end of the exercise on 22nd January 2023.
In response to allegations of the harvesting of Voter Identification Numbers (VINs) from PVCs by INEC staff for malicious purposes as seen in a video online, INEC has explained that what the Commission’s staff were seen doing in the video was feeding into an online component to enhance the PVC collection process. According to a statement by the Commission, there will be a dedicated portal where voters can ascertain whether their PVCs are ready, as well as find the locations for collection. The Commission further clarified that the VINs for voters who registered between January and July 2022, were automatically harvested while those for older uncollected PVCs that predate the new INEC guidelines have to be harvested manually for upload to the PVC collection portal.