The Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC), says that a total of 87,209,007 permanent voter cards (PVCs) have been collected across the country.
INEC chairman , Prof. Mahmood Yakubu,announced this yesterday, during a media briefing at the national collation centre in Abuja.
A breakdown of the figure showed that Lagos leads in the number of collected PVCs with 6,214,970. This is closely followed by Kano with 5,594,193, and Kaduna with 4,164, 473.
He noted that the current voter register has over 94 million voters but stated that the Commission will continue to clean it up with technology going forward. According to him, of the number, 93.3 percent have collected their PVCs while 6,259,229 cards which is 6.7 percent of PVCs are still uncollected.
The INEC chairman further revealed that a total of 1,642,385 polling units and collation centre agents of political parties will participate in the elections.
He also disclosed that the Commission has fully recovered from the recent attacks on her facilities in some states, while raising concerns about vote buying but was hopeful that the vices will be dealt with.
Noting that all materials have been distributed to states, he said the sensitive materials are currently being delivered to local government areas. He said that nonsensitive materials were deployed two months ago.
The INEC chairman reiterated that 240 polling units do not have voters, also saying that staff to be deployed for the elections have been trained. He assured that the commission will closely monitor the conduct of staff and will sanction anyone who compromises the process.
According to Yakubu, the daily briefing is to update stakeholders as events unfold ahead of and during the election.
