The Independent National Electoral Commission
has responded to criticisms of the ongoing third
phase of the distribution of the permanent voter
cards.
It denied conspiring with any group and assured
the public of its commitment towards ensuring
that every properly registered voter get their
permanent voter card for the 2015 general
election.
Attahiru Jega, INEC Chairman
In a statement on Sunday by Mr. Kayode Idowu,
the Chief Press Secretary to the Chairman of
INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega, the commission said
contrary to allegations in some quarters, no duly
registered person has been delisted from the
register of voters, neither will any be denied their
PVC.
The commission said it was making efforts to
resolve the “temporary challenges” that have
been experienced during the exercise in some of
the nine states, where the exercise started on
Friday.
It said, “In particular, it is completely false that
INEC has removed the records of 1.4 million
persons from the Register of Voters compiled in
2011 in Lagos State. It is true that at the end of
the 2011 general registration exercise, the
commission announced a figure of 6.1 million
registrants in the state. But when that data was
subjected to the Automated Fingerprints
Identification System software, 82,892 multiple
registrations were eliminated.
“Also, there was the technical challenge of loss
of data and incomplete data affecting about one
million records – mostly in 1,792 polling units
that were identified and made public before the
present exercise. That was why and how the
Post-Business Rule figure for Lagos State (on the
basis of which PVCs were printed) came down to
about 4.6 million registrants.”
“For avoidance of doubt, a pre-acknowledged
data loss and incomplete data of some
registrants is not a ‘conspiracy’ issue as has
been alleged by some notable persons. It is a
back-end technical challenge that is far from
sealing the fate of affected persons, and for
which INEC has already put in place measures to
ensure redress.”
The statement also said INEC has made
provision for eligible persons for whom PVCs
could not be printed due to data loss or defective
data to come out from Wednesday, November 12
to Monday, November 17, 2014 for their data to
be recaptured during the CVR.
-Punch.
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