The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it is fully ready to conduct a free, fair and credible general election for Nigeria in 2023.
INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, gave the assurances on Wednesday during the Commission’s quarterly meeting with political parties for the year 2022 in Abuja.
Prof. Yakubu stated one of the things the commission would do at ensuring a credible election is the transmission of results to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) in real-time for the 2023 elections.
He also reassured Nigerians that there is no going back on the deployment of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for voter accreditation.
“There will be no Incident Form that enables ineligible persons to vote using other people’s Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) during elections. We are committed to ensuring that the 2023 General Election is transparent and credible, reflecting the will of the Nigerian people.”
He also assured “Nigerians that our process of cleaning up the register is robust. After a rigorous cleaning-up of the data using the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS), a total of 2,780,756 (22.6%) were identified as ineligible registrants and invalidated from the record, among them double/multiple registrants, underage persons, and out rightly fake registrations that fail to meet our business rules. Consequently, the number of valid registrations (post-ABIS) is 9, 518, 188.”
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According to the INEC chairman, 9,518,188 new voters have been added to the existing register of 84,004,084 voters, with the preliminary register of voters in Nigeria now standing at 93,522,272.
“It is preliminary because Section 19(1) and (2) of the Electoral Act 2022 requires the Commission to display the hard copies of the register of voters for each Registration Area (Ward) and Local Government Area (and simultaneously publish the entire register on the Commission’s website) for a period of two weeks for scrutiny, claims and objections by citizens not later than 90 days to a General Election,” Yakubu added.
The INEC boss further said, “Accordingly, in the next few days, the Commission will print 9,352,228 pages of the register. The hard copy will be displayed for each of the 8,809 Registration Areas (Wards) and 774 Local Government Areas nationwide while the entire register will be published on our website for claims and objections as required by law.
“The display of the physical register will take place at the designated centers from Saturday 12th – Friday 25th November 2022. Further details, including the procedure for filing claims and objections, will be released by the Commission next week. I would like to appeal to all Nigerians to seize the opportunity of the display to scrutinize the list and help us to clean it up further so that the final register of voters for the 2023 General Election can be compiled and published.
“The Commission is also working hard to ensure the completion of printing of remaining PVCs for new voters as well as those that applied to transfer or the replacement of their lost or damaged cards. In the coming days, we will also inform Nigerians of the detailed plan to ensure a seamless collection of the PVCs. We are aware that Nigerians expect an improvement in the procedure for PVC collection. Since the end of the CVR in July this year, we have been working to ensure that citizens have a pleasant experience when they come to collect their cards.