Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on Monday described as misleading claims, that it denied over seven million eligible Nigerians the opportunity to complete their registration.
It said there was no iota of truth that Nigerians that applied for online pre-registration during the last nationwide Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) were denied the opportunity and consequently the collection of their Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs).
The commission, in a statement by its National Commissioner and Chairman Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, argued that the victims should be the ones to be blamed and not the commission.
“This claim is misleading. To set the record straight, Nigerians may recall that on June 28, 2021, the commission introduced the online pre-registration of voters. By doing so, citizens were given the opportunity to commence the registration online and then book for an appointment at their convenience to complete the physical Biometric Capture at designated centres. It was a novel idea leveraging on technology to ease the registration process. This was in addition to the walk-in option at physical centres, where Nigerians can commence and complete their registration simultaneously without going through the online pre-registration procedure. In the interest of transparency, the commission provided weekly statistical updates on the exercise. For the online pre-registration, a total 10,487,972 commenced the process.
“However, by the deadline of the exercise, 3,444,378 Nigerians completed their pre-registration physically at the designated centres in line with the commission’s policy. Some 7,043,594 applicants did not complete the registration. Again, the commission made the information public. This is what some people are now using to say that they were denied the opportunity when in reality they failed to either complete the online enrolment or appear physically at the designated centres to complete the process,” it said.
