I expected to spend the whole day
Nigeria with a population of 180 million people out of which 68.8million registered and were eligible to vote in the 2015 General election. This means only 38 per cent of the country’s population registered with the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) as eligible voters. This percentage is relatively small or low in comparison to the 61% of its population who are eligible to register as voters according to the National Population Commission (NPC) and the National Bureau for Statistics (NBS). Source
How mine went
On February 14th I read 6 COMPELLING reasons to go get your PVC now, it reminded me that I haven’t gotten my PVC and that if I want to contribute significantly to the change of leadership of Nigeria I must among many things Vote in 2019.
The Permanent Voter’s Card is an Identity Card required to Vote in Nigeria.
2 weeks later I went with a group of friends to get the PVC — One person had gone earlier to secure spots for us on the expected long queue, We got there a bit later than we intended to, they had passed our turn. On getting closer it appeared that the person in charge was leaving, he was done with his task for that period. There were complaints from people around who had just arrived. Although he claimed that someone would replace him most people weren’t satisfied as there was uncertainty on who would replace him and when the person would arrive.
We met a staff INEC asking him to do since we had missed our turn, there were initial rants about how once they pass a number they can’t return to it and how the list is only valid for one day. We were advised to come the next day, that didn’t sit well with us because we didn’t understand how by 11 am it was already kinda too late, We kept pressing till we were told by a staff to come to another location, We didn’t waste any time. Vamoose
I’m glad it turned out to be faster than expected, the person who kept space for us at the initial location stayed longer than we did as he hadn’t even finished when we had. We collected the phone number of the INEC staff who helped us out for future reference. We were told that the collection of the Permanent Voter’s Card (PVC) should be later this year in November, INEC has a PVC Locator platform to guide you on where to collect the PVC.
What do I think about the process: The process could be better, INEC looks understaffed and I think the issuing of temporary card first before permanent card increases the cost of the whole process. The major complaints from many people is that the process is stressful and time wasting, I feared I was going to spend the whole day there. INEC needs to make the process seamless to encourage many people to register.
Who would I vote for: It’s too early to say.