INEC may not extend CVR ― National commissioner

IN spite of calls for more time to enable people to get registered, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has express unlikelihood of extending the ongoing Continuous Voters Registration (CVR) exercise in spite of the late hours rush by Nigerians.

The indication was expressed by National Commissioner of INEC in charge of Adamawa, Taraba and Borno States who is also a member of the Commission’s Operations and Logistics Committee, AVM Ahmed Tijjani Mu’azu, during an interaction with newsmen shortly after the opening ceremony of a three-day workshop on training of additional field officers for Registration Area (RAs) and Enumeration Area Demarcation (EADs) held in Gombe for the six States in the North-East.

According to him, any day and date extension to the August 17th closing date for the CVR exercise will infringe on the process of voting during the 2019 general elections.

He explained that “the process of consolidation and printing takes 90 days. If we extend it beyond August 17th, it will infringe on the process of voting as they may come in late. We want to make sure that by November 2018, we print out all the PVCs and make them available for collection”.

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He further said that INEC did not arrive at the August August 17th date alone, but that it did so in collaboration with stakeholders explaining that “we did not take that decision alone, we did it in consultation with all stakeholders, political parties, Civil Society Organizations and the media who all agreed on the August 17th deadline.”

He, however, wondered why Nigerians were taking chances even when the exercise commenced since April 2017 saying, “Nigerians being who they are, even if we extend it to another month people will go to sleep and wait for the last three days or weeks before they will start coming out”.

He then appealed to the media to continue to encourage the people to go out and get their PVCs as that is their only means of voting in the next general elections.

Earlier, the Gombe State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Alhaji Umar Ibrahim, had during his welcome address outlined the benefits of the workshop to include, guiding the delimitation exercise, address mapping challenges, assist in knowing where to locate polling units (PUs) and delineation of AA boundaries.

He stated that the trainees are expected to spend the last two days of the workshop on the field as well as spatial data management.