The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has proposed a policy to recall and destroy Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) that have not been collected for more than a decade, citing operational inefficiencies and the need to rationalize the voter management system.
This recommendation emerged from INEC's review of the 2023 general elections, which produced 208 proposals aimed at improving electoral processes.
According to INEC, more than six million PVCs remain unclaimed, including many issued as early as 2015. Stakeholders advised that PVCs unclaimed for long periods be recalled, starting with those issued almost a decade ago.
“Following the publication of the Voter Registry, the commission made the PVCs available to voters for collection on December 12, 2022,” INEC explained. “The exercise was initially planned to end on January 22, 2023. However, the fact that a large number of registered voters were yet to collect their PVCs forced the commission to extend the deadline to February 5, 2023 after to delegate collection to the district level between January 6 and 15, 2023 to facilitate the process.”
Despite these efforts, including an online tracking tool and partnerships with civil society organizations (CSOs) to support collection drives, millions of PVCs remain unclaimed.
“The low PVC collection rate and other related challenges are illustrative of the problem of processing and managing voters in Nigeria,” INEC said. “With the support of development partners, some CSOs have set up information centers in selected states and the FCT to help voters locate and collect their PVCs. Despite these efforts, more than six million PVC remained uncollected, many of them dating back to 2015.
“Consequently, a recommendation from the review was that the commission should consider removing PVCs issued in 2015, as it is not clear whether they will ever be collected by homeowners.”
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INEC also outlined plans to modernize Nigeria's electoral process, including the phasing out of PVCs and the introduction of diaspora voting. The commission highlighted the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) as a transformative tool, making physical PVCs less critical for voter accreditation.
“Unlike the SCR, the electoral registry now resides in the BVAS,” INEC explained. “The new device does not read or extract voter data from the PVC. In addition, the Electoral Law of 2022 has made biometric accreditation (fingerprint or facial) mandatory to vote.
“The usefulness of PVC is now limited to voter identification. It is therefore possible to identify voters using their registration ballots, which eliminates the need for PVC, the cost of producing them, the logistics for their distribution and the fact that voters without them cannot vote, thus raising serious problems of deprivation of rights.
“With the BVAS, voters can be identified through their registration ticket, also known as the Temporary Voter Card, and be biometrically accredited without the need for a plastic PVC.”
Newslodge