The Independent National Electoral Commission has once again restated that politicians involved in the buying of the Permanent Voter Cards and harvesting Voter Identification Numbers are embarking on exercise in futility as they will not be useful in the 2023 general election.

“Those who are harvesting VINs of registered voters are doing that in futility. Why are they harvesting and buying off VINs when those VINs were published in our local government areas and in our registration areas when we displayed the voters registers for claims and objections. Those VINs are there but they are useless as every voter must be accredited through the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System “, the INEC National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee( INEC), Mr. Festus Okoye Esq., has said.

According to him, buying of voters card would only oppress voters and prevent them from exercising their rights on election day as nobody except the owner of the cards can make use of them on election day.

Mr. Okoye who was answering questions on a television programme The Morning Show on Arise TV said segment said that the data of every registered voter was domiciled in the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System and not in the PVCs. “We have made it very clear that this Commission will deploy BVAS for voters’ identification and authentication and the data of every registered voter in Nigeria per polling unit is domiciled in BVAS and not in the PVCs.

“The only thing the Presiding Officer will do on election day is to look at the last six digits of your PVC and use it to bring out your VIN for the purpose of calling up your data from the BVAS. Those buying PVCs and harvesting VINs can only engage in voter oppression. They can only prevent the voter from going to the polling unit on election day but in terms of carrying the PVC of someone else to give another person for voting, I can assure you that it is next to impossible.”

Also speaking during an interview on Channels TV’s 2022 In Retrospect, Mr. Okoye said, “The BVAS, which we said will be the game-changer in relation to this election, is in place. And I want to confirm that we have a sufficient number of BVAS that will be used in the conduct of elections in the 176,846 polling units across this country.”

He also said over 1.4 million adhoc staff will be trained in the effective usage of the BVAS in readiness for the elections. “We want to train our adhoc staff longer so that we won’t have people not knowing how to use the BVAS and blaming it on technology and so on.

On the recruitment of Ad hoc staff for the election, Okoye said; “The Commission will engage 1.4 million Ad hoc staff made up of the National Youth Service Corps members and students in tertiary institutions in their final year. You will know that it is next to impossible for INEC to have over 1.4 million staff members on its pay roll. The staff strength of the Commission is around 16,000 and so when we devolve the collection to the various registration areas, we are going to engage the services of corps members to assist the Commission in terms of giving out these PVCs.”