Akwa Ibom: From 65% To 95% PVC collection

The Akwa Ibom  State Resident Electoral Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) disclosed this in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, during a two-day workshop on responsible reporting of the 2015 general elections for media practitioners and civil society organisations, by Vibram Nigeria Limited in collaboration with NUJ and DSS.

Austin Okojie says the state has within the past three weeks jumped from 65 to  95 per cent collection of the permanent voter card in preparation for the forthcoming general elections.

This high level of compliance with the recently introduced innovation to the electoral process, Okojie believes, will go a long way in assisting INEC to successfully conduct a free, fair and credible elections.

In reaction to the theme of his paper,  «Election management and delivery in Nigeria: Will INEC pass the acid test?, the Resident Electoral Commissioner expressed optimism that given the recently introduced innovations such as the PVCs, accreditation of voters before polling, use of card reader for accreditation, timely arrival or delivery of elections materials and introduction of situation control room at the national headquarters and state, INEC is very likely to pass the acid test.

Dwelling further on the issue of  timely delivery of election materials, he said, «It was a reoccurring decimal that election materials were not delivered at the various polling units on schedule. In fact, in some polling units, election materials were delivered some minutes pass 3.00 or 4.00pm in the past. But presently, the management team of INEC has made it a point of duty to ensure that election materials are delivered at the various polling units, at least not later than 12 hours to the conduct of the election».

Reassuring, Okojie vowed to make extra effort to ensure the arrival of election materials not less than 24 hours before the election, as the commission intends to use early hours of the day – between 8am to 1pm for accreditation of voters, to give room for voting to bigin from 1pm.

Noting that the media has a fundamental role to play in the electoral processes to ensure that the upcoming elections are conducted freely and fairly, he stressed the  need for media professionals to uphold the ethics of the media profession and shun all manners of unethical practice in the course of discharging their statutory responsibilities.