By CrossRiverWatch Admin
The Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in Cross River, Dr. Alalibo Johnson has tasked political parties in the State to mobilize those who are yet to get their Permanent Voter’s Cards, PVCs to do so.
Dr. Johnson, who resumed in August for a second stint as REC in the State, told representatives of the parties at the Mike Igini conference hall of the commission’s office in Calabar that there were over 90,000 uncollected PVCs from 2011 across the 18 Local Government Areas with more yet to arrive as the commission is set to print more from the last continuous voter registration exercise.
“Since 2011 we have not finished distributing PVCs,” Dr. Johnson said, adding that, “those who registered between January and June, we are currently doing an automated biometric cleaning of the system to clean the record, and they will collect their PVCs in October and those who registered in July, they will collect in November.”
He also disclosed that the State currently has 3,281 polling units, which the commission will look more closely at that, as there are reports of empty polling units in northern Cross River. He announced the opening of a portal for parties to upload their agents as well as for those applying to ad-hoc staff, which will include students in 200Level and above in federal tertiary institutions.
Furthermore, he cautioned against the use of foul language during campaigns and reminded the parties of the threshold on expenditure for campaigns as provided for in Sections 87 – 89 of the Electoral Act 2022.
The Chairman of the Young Progressives Party, Anthony Bissong in his remarks, commended the REC for the interface and announce that the Inter-Party Advisory Committee, IPAC, now has a new secretariat. He said further communications will be done with the registered address.
He sought clarifications on the issue of the Commission tampering with the voter’s register, which the REC said that nothing of such nature was happening. Mr. Attah also urged the Commission to make the Bi-modal Voter Accreditation System machines available for the State electoral commission to conduct its council polls in 2023 which the REC responded was a decision that will be made from the head office in Abuja.
Meanwhile, the representative of the African Action Congress, Jonathan Ugbal queried the system being used to clean up the voters register especially as Local Governments which are constitutionally mandated to record births and deaths have not been doing so. He also sought the Commission’s position on the case filed at the Owerri division of the Federal High Court seeking to halt the electronic transmission of results.
In his response, Dr. Johnson said that the Commission always has more staff than the Registration Areas in each State, while the Electoral Officers in each Local Government always submit monthly reports which usually includes the names of prominent people who have died.
On the Court case, he averred that the Commission was law-abiding. However, he expressed optimism that since the electronic transmission of results was a law, the Courts will rule in favor of INEC.
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