The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it has registered 537,874 new voters in Kaduna State during the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise which came to an end on Aug. 31.

INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner in the state, Malam Abdullahi Kaugama, who announced this at a news conference in Kaduna on Saturday, said that 235,532 out of the figure were females.

Kaugama added that so far, 52,507 registered voters collected their Permanent Voter Card (PVC) in the state, while 269,787 PVCs were uncollected.

He said that the collection of PVCs would continue until a week before election, urging those who had yet to collect their cards to do so at INEC local government offices.

According to him, all new registered voters and those whose cards have yet to be printed will get their PVCs before the general elections.

“With the conclusion of the CVR, the exercise in Kaduna State has so far registered 537,874, comprising 302,342 males and 235,532 females.

“Those whose PVCs were corrected were 29,179, defaced; 4,018 and lost; 17,298, while inter-state transfer were 8,239 and intra-state transfer; 19,434,’’ he said.

He also said that PVCs that had yet to be printed up to 2017 in the state were 9,622.

He added that with the conclusion of the CVR exercise, the new list would be displayed at INEC local government offices from Sept. 4 to Sept. 8 for affected voters to crosscheck and validate their captured data.

The commissioner assured the public of INEC’s commitment to conduct free, fair and credible elections in 2019.