Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, has warned voters against multiple registration for the Permanent Voter’s Card (PVC) ahead of the November 6 Anambra governorship election.
He made this known in an emergency meeting of political parties and the INEC, held at the commission’s conference room in Abuja on Friday.
He further disclosed that a total of 138,802 citizens completed their registrations, including applications for transfer and requests for replacement of lost, damaged or defaced PVCs as required by law.
The number of valid registrants in Anambra state at the of the first quarter of the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) was 77,475 and this figure was added to the existing number of 2,447,996 eligible voters used for the 2019 General Elections. The total number of registered voters in Anambra State now stands at 2,525,471, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu said.
“We have almost completed the recruitment of Ad hoc staff among the about 26,000 election duty staffs required for the November 6 governorship election in the state, though there are still some minor shortfalls.”
“The training of Electoral Officers (EOs) and Assistant Electoral Officers (AEOs) have been completed while the training of Supervisory Presiding Officers (SPOs) will commence soon,” Prof. Mahmood said.
He further expressed his confidence in Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) which achieved 97.4% success in the just-concluded Isoko South 1 state constituency bye-election in Delta State as against the 32.8% success recorded in 2019.
He appealed to all political parties and candidates not to exacerbate the feeling of insecurity in Anambra state through unguarded utterances and actions as doing so could compound the security situation and make the work harder for the commission, themselves and the security agencies.
He said that the moment calls for statesmanship and maturity which was the reason for the emergency meeting.
He concluded by expressing his confidence that the outcome of the emergency meeting would be productive and helpful to the Commission and political parties as preparations for the November 6 Anambra Governorship election continues. (NAN)
