The ongoing nationwide Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise would end on July 31, 2022.
This was disclosed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in a statement by its National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Mr Festus Okoye, on Friday.
He said the decision is to allow the commission perform the legal requirements it has to undertake before the general elections.
He said the hours of registration had been extended to eight hours daily from 9am to 5pm, including weekends to enable more Nigerians register.
Mr Okoye said the commission took the decision at its extraordinary meeting where it discussed among other things, the suspension of the ongoing CVR.
This followed the judgment delivered by the Federal High Court on Wednesday July 13 2022 in which it dismissed the suit filed by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) seeking an extension of the exercise beyond June, 30 2022.
The court had affirmed that INEC remained at liberty to appoint a date of its choice to suspend the CVR, provided it was not later than 90 days before the date fixed for the general elections as provided in Sec. 9(6) of the Electoral Act 2022.
Okoye said that in compliance with the interim injunction of the court pending the determination of the substantive suit, and in order to enable more Nigerians to register, INEC continued with the CVR beyond June 30.
Okoye said that INEC appreciated that the timeframe might be tight for many prospective registrants, but there was a lot that the commission was required to do under the electoral legal framework in relation to voter registration and compilation of the register that would require time to accomplish.
He said that for instance, INEC was required to: “Clean-up the register to remove multiple registrants using the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS);
“Consolidate the national register of voters (existing voters and new registrants) and display same on Polling Unit basis for each of the 8,809 Registration Areas (Wards) across the 774 Local Government Areas nationwide for public scrutiny which lasts for a period of one week.”
Okoye said that on the basis of a new projection of 95 million voters, on the basis of 10 voters per page, the commission had to print 9,500,000 pages for the display;
He added that INEC was also required to print millions of Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) for all fresh registrants and applicants for transfer and replacement of lost or damaged PVCs.
