By Adeola Badru

Ahead of the February 25 general election in the country, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has proposed to conduct mock voters’accreditation/verification exercise at twelve polling units in the three senatorial districts of Oyo State on Saturday, February 4.

The state’s Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, Dr. Adeniran Tella made the disclosure yesterday, during a press briefing, to enlighten voters in the state on the essence of the exercise, which he said, is to enlighten the general public of the robustness of the system and to further strengthen the processes ahead of the general election in the state.

He said: “The commission, therefore, wishes to appeal to registered voters in the effected Polling units to appear on the scheduled date with their Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) for the mock exercise.”

“No doubt, the exercise will help reassure the general public of the robustness of our system and to further strengthen our processes ahead of the general election in the state.”

“It should be noted that, at the end of the exercise, the 12 BVAS machines involved will be reconfigured before they are deployed for the general elections in the state.”

“The commission is fully ready for the coming election as series of training are being conducted and will yet to be conducted for both staff and ad-hoc staff members in order to have a seamless election in the state.”

“The commission is to deploy technology for the conduct of the forthcoming elections through the use of BVAS for accreditation/verification of voters and uploading polling units results through INEC result viewing portal (IReV) on election day.”

While appealing to residents of the state to collect their PVCs, the REC noted that about 800,000 PVCs are still uncollected in the state, noting that: “We have so far distributed over 402,321 PVCs in the state. We still have over 800,000 uncollected PVCs at our various 33 INEC Local Government Area Offices.”

“I urge you to have your PVCs collected today because your PVC is your power on election day,” he said.