Nigerians have been encouraged by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to forgo needless urgency to register for the Permanent Voters Card (PVC), stressing that a popular website still taking registrations from citizens is a fake and not affiliated with the commission.
According to Anaedoonline.ng, when the extended deadline had passed, the country’s electoral authorities shut down the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) portal on Sunday, July 31.
The CVR exercise apparently recorded over 12 million additional applications.
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However, hours after the registration portal’s closing, a website purportedly sprang online pushing Nigerians to sign up as soon as possible for their PVC in order to participate in the general election of 2023.
However, INEC has explicitly said that the popular website is bogus in a statement released in Abuja on Monday by the national commissioner and chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, Mr. Festus Okoye.
The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) permitted individual PVC registration online, according to the website developers that Okoye had branded as scammers, in order to avoid the needless crowds at the NIMC centers.
“The Commission states unequivocally that the site is not linked to the commission and the link/portal is spurious and from a dubious source,” Okoye said.
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He went on to say that the only entity with a constitutional and legal mandate to register people who were eligible to vote in any election in Nigeria, as well as to update and amend the register as necessary, was INEC.
“The commission is solely responsible for organising, undertaking, and supervising national elections in the country and does not share this responsibility with anybody or organisation.
“Members of the public are strongly advised not to succumb to the antics of online scammers and should avoid such fake sites.
“The commission has concluded the Continuous Voter Registration nationwide and does not need to open an additional site or portal for the purposes of registration of voters,” Okoye added.
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See the statement below as uploaded on the commission’s official Twitter page.
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