By: Mercy Peter
The collection of Permanent Voter Cards, PVCs in Ondo State commenced, Thursday 17 October 2024, the Independent National Electoral Commission has announced.
This is coming ahead of the November 16th governorship election in the state.
Seventeen political parties fielded candidates for the poll.
No fewer than 2,053,061 voters are expected to go to poll at the election.
A total of 295,603 Permanent Voter Cards are yet to be collected, the Resident Electoral Commissioner in the state, Mrs Oluwatoyin Babalola, disclosed recently.
58,708 new voters were registered in the last Continuous Voter Registration exercise in the state . In addition, 3,132 voters transferred their registrations within and into Ondo State, while 123 voters transferred within and outside the state.
The Commission said the PVCs will be available for collection at the 203 wards across the state for the next five days (17th-21st October 2024).
INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu disclosed this during the quarterly consultative meeting between the Commission and the political parties in Abuja. This is the last scheduled meeting
for the year between the Commission and the political parties, except there is a serious issue that demands for one.
Yakubu said the centres will be open to citizens from 9am – 5pm daily.
He however said collection of PVCs will be restricted to the 18 Local Government Areas of the state from 23rd to 29th of October 2024.
INEC boss therefore appealed to political parties to join in mobilising voters to pick up there PVCs.
He said: “The Commission is also glad to report that the collection of Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) from the last Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) commenced today in Ondo State. For the next five days (17th – 21st October 2024), the cards will be available for collection at each of the 203 wards across the State.
“Thereafter, the cards will be available for collection in our 18 Local Government Area offices in the State for one week (23rd – 29th October 2024).
” As earlier announced, the centres will be open to citizens from 9am – 5pm daily. A document containing the names and location addresses of the 221 collection centres has already been uploaded to our website for public information.
As usual, we appeal to political parties to support the Commission in mobilising registered voters to collect their PVCs.
“To make the process easier, we have also uploaded the register containing the names and photographs of new voters (fresh registrants, transfers and applications for replacement of lost or damaged PVCs) to our website to facilitate a seamless collection of the cards.”
Yakubu also announced that all the parties fielding candidates for the election are in full compliance with requirements for the upload, saying efforts are on to deliver the identification tags for each of the 24,148 agents uploaded to INEC portal.
“The Commission is glad to note that all political parties fielding candidates for the election are in full compliance with the requirements for the upload. We are working in earnest to ensure that we deliver the identification tags for each of the 24,148 agents uploaded to our portal,” he said.
