Abuja- The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has urged registered political parties to collaborate with the commission to ensure that registered voters obtained their Permanent Voter Cards before 2015 general elections.
The INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, made the call at a meeting with political parties on Tuesday in Abuja.
Jega said that the commission had received a lot of comments and criticisms on the manner it organised the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) and the distribution of the Permanent Voter Cards (PVC) across the country.
He assured that in spite of challenges currently being experienced by the commission, it remained committed to ensuring that all registered voters got their permanent cards before the elections scheduled for February, 2015.
“Obviously, there is a limit to what we do to ensure everybody has picked his or her card, because we have a joint responsibility with you to urge the voters to come out and collect their cards,’’ Jega said.
He said that the commission had limitation of resources as well as constraints of political economy in terms of what it could do.
“In many countries, they send cards by post to voters but in Nigeria, we cannot even contemplate to send cards to voters.
“We are even hesitant to allow collection by proxy because we know that even collection by proxy can be abused.
“So there are constraints which made us to insist that people have to come out by themselves to collect their cards.
“Obviously we have limitations of resources; we cannot deploy to the polling units permanently for people to give their vote.
“The funding we have is only to deploy staff for three days in the first instance, after which we have to return these cards to our local government offices for people to collect them before January 31,’’ he stated.
The chairman reassured that INEC would continue to be impartial, non-partisan and do everything possible to create a level-playing field for all political parties and all contestants.
“The challenge for us is to continue to be accommodating and work together for the sole purpose of being objective or doing our best to improve the electoral process in our country,’’ he said.
He, however, stressed the need for political parties to respect the rules of the game and abide by the codes of conduct to promote, avoid conflict and minimize the possibility of violence.
He explained that the meeting was convened to brief political parties on the commission’s preparation for the 2015 general elections and on the new aspect of the guidelines for the conduct of the elections.
In his response, the National Chairman of Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC), Dr Tanko Yunusa, said that the council had made progress on enlightenment of the public of PVC and CVR.
Yunusa said that IPAC had constituted a committee to work on the debate that would be issues-based and on manifestoes of political parties to enable the electorate to make informed choice.
“IPAC has also concluded plan to go round the zones to enlighten the public with regards to free, fair and credible elections.
“We are working very hard to ensure that the code of conduct is being delivered down to the grassroots,’’ Yunusa said.
He urged political parties to play by the rule and avoid campaign of name-calling and other actions that could cause violence.
INEC urges political parties to collaborate on CRV, PVCs
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