With barely 22 days to the Oyo State general election, the State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Adeniran Tella, has revealed that 800,000 uncollected Permanent Voter Cards are still in their custody.
He made this disclosure on Wednesday at a meeting of stakeholders during the Mock Voters Accreditation/Verification exercise held at the INEC office in Ibadan.
Tella said, “The commission is fully prepared for the upcoming elections as they are conducting a series of training sessions for both staff and ad-hoc staff in preparation for the elections in the state.
“The collection of PVCs in the 33 INEC Local Government Area offices has been extended for eight days with an additional two hours, and is expected to end on Sunday, February 5, 2023, from 9:00am to 5:00pm daily, including Saturday and Sunday.
“As I speak to you, so far we have distributed more than 402,321 PVCs in the state. We still have over 800,000 uncollected PVCs in the 33 INEC LGA offices.
“I urge you to collect your PVCs today because your PVC is your power on election day.”
On voter accreditation, the REC said the exercise was to conduct field trials in the six councils of Akinyele, Atiba, Iseyin, Ogbomoso North, Ibadan North and Ido.
He said: “The purpose of the gathering is to inform about the proposed Voter Accreditation / Verification exercise in the 12 Electoral Units of the three Senatorial Districts of the State.”
He added that the exercise will be held next Saturday from 8:00 am to 2:30 pm in all the affected local government areas and Electoral Units.
