INEC Orders Review of Voter Registration Records and PVC Distribution Bottlenecks in South-East Ahead of 2027

The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Joash Amupitan, has directed officials in the South-East to review Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) records and dismantle all obstacles hindering the distribution of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) ahead of the 2027 general elections.

Amupitan gave the directive on Tuesday in Enugu at the South-East Zonal Interactive Meeting with Staff and Readiness Assessment for the 2027 General Election, according to a statement by the Commission.

He said the Commission’s primary operational focus in the zone is to review local CVR records and remove every bottleneck affecting PVC distribution.

“Our objective is uncompromising: no eligible citizen who registered should be disenfranchised by administrative or logistical friction,” Amupitan declared.

The INEC Chairman disclosed that the National Register of Voters now stands at over 103 million registered citizens. He recalled that three structured phases of the CVR exercise were conducted under Section 10 of the Electoral Act 2026.

Phase One, held from August 25 to December 10, 2025, registered 2,611,266 voters. Phase Two, between January 5 and April 17, 2026, registered 4,121,835 voters, while Phase Three, from May 11 to July 26, 2026, registered 3,867,997 voters.

He said the figures bring the total number of new registrants to 10,772,421 citizens, subject to final Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) deduplication verification at the National Headquarters.

Amupitan disclosed that in the third phase, the Commission introduced the Online Registration Portal for the first time in Nigeria, a technology designed “to eliminate barriers of distance and time.”

He added that the Commission had activated Printable PVC technology in line with Section 18(1) of the Electoral Act 2026, an innovation he said ensures that “waiting for months to pick up a voter’s card becomes a relic of the past”.

The Enugu engagement is the third in the Commission’s nationwide readiness assessment tour, following the South-West edition in Lagos on September 7, 2026, and the North-West edition in Kaduna on September 28, 2026.

Amupitan said the visit was significant because no INEC Chairman had visited the Enugu office since 1999. “Today, as we bring our nationwide tour to the South-East, we continue to break that tradition of remote governance,” he said.

He also warned staff against partisanship and administrative negligence, stating that “partisan leaning, administrative negligence, extortion, or compromised ethics will not be tolerated under my leadership”.