The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has released data showing that 87,209,007 (93.3%) of the 93,469,008 registered voters collected their permanent voter cards (PVCs) as of February 5, 2023.
Recall that the commission had initially fixed December 12 to January 22 for the PVC collection throughout the country.
However, it extended the deadline till January 29 and again till February 5.
Chairman of the commission, Prof Mahmood Yakubu who presented the document at a briefing in Abuja on Thursday, said regional spread of collected PVCs showed that the northwest led with 21,445,000; southwest, 15,536,213; north central, 14,603,621; south-south, 13,284,920, northeast, 11,937,769; and southeast, 10,401,484.
According to the document, 6,259,229 cards — representing 6.7 percent of PVCs — remain uncollected.
The data also showed that Lagos leads in the number of collected PVCs with 6,214,970, followed by Kano with 5,594,193, and Kaduna with 4,164, 473.
The states with the lowest collection rate are Osun at 81.5 per cent, Oyo at 84.3 per cent, Ogun at 84.7 per cent, Edo at 85.1 per cent, Ondo at 86.9 per cent and Lagos at 88.0 per cent, the document further showed.
Yakubu said he was pleased that the rate of collection was higher than in the previous years, even though there were still some uncollected PVCs.
The chairman also said the commission had made adequate preparation in terms of logistics to ensure seamless conduct of the elections.
“This election is a huge logistical deployment. We have painstakingly procured, organised and delivered all the materials to the States for deployment.
“We commenced the delivery of non-sensitive materials over two months ago and they have been batched down to registration area/ward and pulling unit levels.
“Sensitive materials have been delivered to the States and are presently being delivered to our Local Government Area offices. As such, these materials are only between one and two levels away from the Polling Units.
“We have achieved this by learning from our recent difficult experience with logistics.
“We have completed arrangements with the transport unions for the final leg of the movement of personnel and materials to the polling units.
“They have assured us of their readiness to provide all the vehicular needs of the commission for the election.
“I want to assure Nigerians that we are adequately prepared for this election. We remain fully committed to a free, fair and credible process.
I want to once again declare that our allegiance is only to Nigerians. Our commitment is to ensure that in this election we put everything in place for free choice, fair contest and credible outcome,” he said.
Yakubu also expressed that the commission is satisfied with the performance of the BVAS after the conduct of a mock accreditation exercise a few weeks earlier.
He said backup technicians for the BVAS had also been deployed for the election.
