EDO 2016: 490,000 Permanent Voters Cards Unclaimed In Edo….REC

By Adibe Emenyonu in Benin City

Ahead of the September 18, 2016 Governorship Election in Edo State, scheduled by the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC), the Resident Electoral Commissioner for the state, Mr. Sam Olumekun has disclosed that over 490,000 Permanent Voters Cards (PVC’s) representing about 30 percent of  registered voters still remain unclaimed out of the 1.7 million registered voters and urged affected persons to take advantage of the ongoing registration to collect them.

The Edo REC warned against multiple voter registration and noted that such registration will be detected and by a special software in their system which would  rendering such registration invalid.

Addressing newsmen on the preparedness of INEC towards the conducts of the 2016 governorship party’s primaries and the September 10 Governorship elections in the state, Olumekun, also disclosed that smart card readers will be used for the governorship election clarifying that the Supreme court pronouncement never asked INEC not to use card readers in elections.

 He stated “ We are aware that some people have not been able to collect their PVC’s, INEC will use this period of registration to distributes the old PVC’s that may not have been collected. Those who have registered and yet to collect their PVC’s should therefore check and collect their cards. Let me state categorically that those who have registered before should avoid multiple registrations as doing so would entail their names been deleted from the voters register, we have a software that will help us delete such names”.