The Resident Electoral Commissioner for Cross River State, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Gabriel Yomere, has addressed Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES) on strategies put in place to enable INEC achieves free, fair and credible elections, come 2023.
Prof, Yomere disclosed the strategies at the first meeting of ICCES since the resumption of his duty on November 10th, 2022, in Calabar.
The REC who called for the meeting because the 2023 election is less than 60 days ahead, said that as far as the Commission is concerned, this time is a critical period.
According to him, “on the point of view of the Commission we are in the critical stage of the preparation for the elections. I want to brief the Press about what we have done so far.”
He explained, that on November 12th, INEC displayed the preliminary register of voters to offer them an opportunity to check the list, if their names are there. Secondly, if their names are wrongly spelt, so that it can be corrected. Adding that through this display of voters register, the commission expects that there might be some people that have registered but in-between, they are no more.
Professor Yomere who also called for the attention of the Commission to be drawn to deceased persons, so that it can clean up its register, used the opportunity to call on those whose names have been omitted to report, so that they can be included.
The REC said “And also there is a likelihood that some people may appear very huge but they are underage and mistakenly get registered. There may be some foreigners who post as indigenes of Nigeria and they registered and as such attention of the Commission is drawn and for that purpose was the register preliminary display.
“We have also shown the distribution of Permanent Voters’ Card (PVC). The distribution of PVC has taken place since 12 of this month and is going to last until the 22nd of January 2023.
“Those who registered but did not collect their PVC. Those who were transferred to Cross River State and have not collected their PVC and those who registered this year from January 16, to July 2022. Their PVC are available for them to come and collect. He announced.
“We are going on this now, until in order to ensure people come out to collect their PVC.” Prof, Yomere revealed.