The Adamawa office of the National Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) has bemoaned the state’s electorate’s slow collecting of outstanding voter cards.
Mallam Hudu Yunusa, the state’s newly-deployed Resident Electoral Commissioner, raised worry at a news conference held at the commission’s Yola headquarters on Friday.
He claimed that over 200,000 PVCs registered since 2019 were sitting idle in the commission’s offices across the 21 local government areas.
He stated that 36,000 extra voters were registered during the 2022 voter registration period.
“Some voter registration cards have yet to be collected by their original enrollees.”
He appealed to the media and the stakeholders to continue to sensitive the electorate to the imperative of the voter cards, stressing the card qualified one as eligible voter.
The REC, explained that the commission recieved delivery of 4,104 Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the Result Viewing Portal for deployment to 4,104 polling units for the elections.
He said the state would host a week long Northeast zonal Technology Training in elections in batches, saying the participants were drawn from Adamawa, Borno, Yobe, Gombe, Bauchi and Taraba states.
Yunusa appealed to politicians and political parties to conduct themselves with decency, discipline and decorum during their campaigns, stressing that campaigns should be issue-based.
“We call on the politicians to avoid name dropping, provocative comments, violence, thuggery and engagement of militia,” he said.
“The Electoral Act prohibits campaigns in worship and public offices, so such attitude would not be condoned by the commission,” he added.
He said the commission had updated the staff skills through capacity building trainings, seminars and workshops on election issues and processes.
According to him, the commission has so far recorded 10,000 people who applied to work as ad hoc staff out of the targeted 16,000 required temporary staff for the polls.
“The commission’s ad hoc staff recruitment portal is still active upto Dec. 14, 2022; we therefore, call on intersted and qualified Nigerians to apply,” he said.
He said the commission would engage stakeholders on the conduct of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) voting, saying “we would focus our attention on Madagali, Fufore and Yola South local government areas.
“We are currently displaying the Preliminary Register of Voters (PRV) nationwide from 12th to 28th November 2022 for claims and objections, ” he disclosed.
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