Stay Away from Polling Units If You Don’t Have PVCs, INEC Warns
With less than 24 hours to the Presidential and National Assembly elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has warned people without Permanent Voters Card (PVC) to stay away from Polling Units.
INEC further warned that anybody without PVC found within the precincts of polling units on Election Day, would be courting trouble.
Festus Okoye, spokesman of the electoral umpire who gave the warning while receiving IT facilities from Community Life Project (CLP) and Ford foundation in support of the INEC Citizens Contact Centre (ICCC) on Thursday in Abuja, was emphatic that PVC remained the only means of identification that would be used on Election Day.
His words: “As Nigerians go to the polling units on Election Day, we want to point out that it is a mandatory provision of the Electoral Act that every citizen who wants to vote in the coming election must have a PVC. It is a mandatory requirement of Section 47, subsection 1 of the Electoral Act.
“So, individuals that do not have the PVC are not required to approach any of our polling units. No individual is permitted to go to the polling units and provide any other means of identification other than the PVC.”
Okoye assured INEC remained committed to the use Bimadal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for voters’ accreditation and uploading of election results to its Result Viewing Portal (IReV), he called on the media, election observer groups and citizens to remember that only the commission had the legal right to announce election results.
According to him, “No media organisation, no individual, no citizen, no domestic or international election observer is permitted under the condition or under the law to announce election results. As some of you are aware, the chairman of INEC is the Electoral Commissioner for the whole of the Federation and the Retuning Officer for the presidential election. So, only the chairman of the commission is permitted by the constitution and the Electoral Act to announce the presidential results. Any other person can be appointed by the commission to announce any other level of election.”
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