Date: 2018-08-14

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Ilorin West, Kwara, has released a total of 9,750 Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) for those that registered in 2017.

Alhaji Abu Uffene, Electoral officer, Ilorin West, disclosed this in an interview with newsmen in his office, on Monday.

He said that out of 9, 750 PVCs that were released by the Commission, 5, 354 had been collected by their owners, while 4, 396 PVCs were yet to be collected.

He, therefore, advised those that registered for PVC in Ilorin West to come forward to collect their cards.

"We are going through stress keeping PVCs for people, as we do physical counting of PVCs every day.

"3, 273 people applied for transfer as a result of change of location of residence, to enable them access polling unit easily, on election day.

"While some have relocated to another state, so they will have to seek for transfer to that place, in which another PVC will be issued to them, with the new address on it, and the old one will be retrieved," he said.

The electoral officer said that INEC started registering people for PVC since April 27, 2018 and there are lots of people that are yet to register for the card.

"Ilorin West has the highest number of population in Kwara, so when we started, we were given only one machine for registration, but due to the population, it has been increased to four registration machines

"We have registered 23, 711 for PVCs and there are still many people that are yet to be registered, so we decide to work on weekends.

"There are 12 wards in Ilorin West, so we divided them into two wards per day, while three wards register on Thursday and Friday, to enable us register people across the 12 wards, and on weekends, anybody from the 12 wards can register," he said.

He said that their major problem was the crowd, saying that they were disorganized and not patient, which has resulted into fight among the people wishing to register on many occasions and thereby disturbing the official work.

The electoral officer called for more presence of security agencies to maintain order at the registration centres.

NAN