ABUJA – Ahead of the 2019 general elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC has proposed to end the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration CVR by the middle of next month. INEC OFFICIAL CHECKING THE THUMB OF A PHYSICALLY CHALLENGED VOTER, DURING THE TESTING OF SMART CARD READER AT HORARE WARD AND JOGEL POLLING UNIT IN JAMA,ARE LGA OF BAUCHI STATE ON SATURDAY.
INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu disclosed this on Thursday during the commission’s second consultative meeting with the Media. “At the meeting with political parties, they proposed mid-August for the CVR to end. When we met with the Civil Societies, they also proposed mid-August and now the media is proposing the first week of August.
So, can we now make a shift? Let us take it to the middle of August”, he said. According to him, the production of Permanent Voter Cards PVCs requires several months to be done, hence the need to bring the exercise to a close. Yakubu recalled that Part 3, S.9(5) of the Electoral Act empowers the Commission to stop the registration of voters, updating and revision of the register anytime before December 15, 2018, that is 60 days to the commencement of the 2019 general elections scheduled for February 16.
Also speaking, the INEC National Commissioner in charge of Ekiti, Osun and Oyo states, Prince Adedeji Soyebi expressed the readiness of the commission to conduct the July 14 governorship election in Ekiti state.
According to him, “in the case of personnel, Ekiti would require 11, 000 ad hoc staff and a bulk of them would be members of the National Youth Service Corps NYSC Scheme while the shortfall would be students of federal tertiary institutions in Ekiti state”. He said all those to be deployed for the elections have been trained and retrained, promising that the commission would deliver a free, fair and credible elections in the state.
