68.8 Million Voters Registered For 2015 Elections, Says Jega

A total number of 68,833,476 voters were registered by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, for the February general elections.

Also, over four million Nigerians were involved in multiple registrations across the country and their names have been successfully removed from the voters register by the electoral body.

Chairman of INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega, made this disclosure at the meeting the commission had with the national leadership of all the 23 registered political parties in Abuja on Tuesday evening.

Jega said, “In line with the provisions of the law, the commission has just announced the publications of the register of voters that will be used for the February 2015 general elections.

“The total number of voters registered for the elections is 68,833,476”.

The INEC chief disclosed that 38,774,391 Nigerians had collected their Permanent Voter Cards out of the 54,341,610 that were ready as of Monday last week.

He, however, said the commission had ordered more PVCs and that some of them were awaiting collection.

Jega said, “The commission has taken delivery of additional PVCs from the contractor, and we are positive that we will have all outstanding cards with us by 28 January, 2015.

“For the avoidance of doubt, possession of PVCs is a strict condition for anyone intending to vote in the 2015 elections”.

In response to the resolutions passed by the House of Representatives directing the commission to allow the use of Temporary Voters Cards in next month’s polls, he said he was not aware of such resolution.

He nevertheless said the commission was working with the intent of using only PVCs for the polls.

Jega regretted that many Nigerians refused to collect their PVCs, adding that in order to address this, the commission had directed all resident electoral commissioners to further decentralise the distribution of the cards to the ward level.

The time for the distribution, he added, had also been fixed from 8.30am to 5.30pm, from Monday to Saturday.

He also said contrary to the doubt being entertained in some quarters, the INEC would use card readers for the elections.

Jega added, “INEC will use card readers for the elections. Th commission has taken delivery of more than 130,000 units of these card readers, and we are on schedule to receive the remaining quantity before the end of January”.

He announced that deployment of the card readers to states had commended.