The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said it would deploy 5,346 staff to 2,673 registration centres nationwide for the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) resuming on June 28.
The Chairman, Prof.Mahmood Yakubu disclosed this while presenting the INEC Voter Enrolment Device (IVED) and online registration portal for the exercise, at a meeting of the commission with media executives on Monday in Abuja.
IVED is an Android tablet to be used in place of the existing Data Capturing Machine used for CVR in the previous exercise.
Yakubu said that before now INEC had 1,446 registration centers that was used to register 14. 2 million new voters, between 2017 and 2018.
“But learning from the experience of what happened we are now almost double the number of those centers. In addition to the states and local governments now have exactly 2,673 registration centers.
“ So it is almost double the number of centers we had in the previous exercise.
“Our hope is that unlike 14.2 million we registered in the previous exercise, we are targeting a minimum of 20 million register this time around which we take the number of Nigeria register voters to over 100 million,” Yakubu said.
He said that majority of the 5,346 personnel to be deployed would be INEC staff, while ad hoc staff would be used where the commission lacked the required number of personnel needed for the exercise.
He said that the commission was working with stakeholders for the security of personnel and equipment to be deployed to the field.
Yakubu disclosed that the design for both the online portal and IVED were done by INEC engineers, taking into consideration Nigeria peculiarity, including weather for its durability.
He noted that the commission was working on ensuring the PVCs for the internally displaced persons were reproduced for them not to be disenfranchised, saying when trouble comes the last thing you remember is PVC.
He added that the PVCs for newly registered voters would be produced on quarterly basis after the registration, nothing that the list of the intended registrants would be displayed at the registration units for claims and objection.
Presenting the online portal and IVED,, INEC Director of ICT, Mr Chidi Nwafor, said that the online portal was designed to give new voters opportunity to pre register online and enable registered voters to revalidate their voter registration, request to update Information or transfer voter registration to another polling unit
He said that intended registrants could register their details online, before going to the nearest registration centre selected by him or her for photograph and finger prints capturing, to complete the exercise.
Nwafor said that the portal was designed in a way that once an intended voter complete the online registration, an appointment for the physical registration would be generated by the portal for the registrant.
Nwafor said that the portal also made provision for people to contact the commission in case of any encounter problem during the process of registration online adding that issues concerning security of the portal against hackers and underaged voter registration would be taken care of.
In a communique issued after the meeting,the media executives suggested that the CVR exercise scheduled to take place in 2,673 designated nationwide be devolved to the INEC LGA Area Council Offices based on a thorough appraisal of the security situation and other related factors.
They also recommended that the CVR exercise be gradually devolved to the other designated registration centres nationwide after further assessment of the security situation and other factors relating to the safety of personnel and materials.
They pledged to ,’support the Commission to intensify voter education, especially on the CVR exercise to ensure that all eligible voters are mobilized to register and participate fully in the electoral process.
