The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it will partner traditional rulers to ensure effective distribution of 99,000 uncollected Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) in Enugu State.

Dr Emeka Ononamadu, the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in the state, made this known on Friday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Enugu.

Ononamadu said that INEC had set in motion the new strategy to ensure that all the uncollected PVCs were distributed to their owners before the 2019 General Elections.

The REC said though, there had been increase in PVCs collection in the past four months, there was need to improve the collection rate by involving critical stakeholders, especially the traditional rulers.

“We went out of our ways to type and photocopy all names of people who have not collected their PVCs at our local council offices and registration centres.

“We have delivered photocopies of the names to the council of traditional rulers in the state to help in distributing the PVCs according to their communities through the traditional rulers, who are gatekeepers of our communities.

“We have received reports that the council of traditional rulers had also distributed same to the individual traditional rulers for onward action.

“The action is to get their people or reminding them, through native community and families information system, to come to our various council headquarters and registration centres close to them to pick up their PVCs,’’ he said.

Ononamadu said INEC believed that the bottom-up strategy of distribution would enable INEC to reach out to those that have not collected their PVCs to come and collect them.

The REC said that though, the Continuous Voters’ Registration (CVR) would stop on Aug. 31, the collection of PVCs would continue till the last week to the election proper.

“Collection of the PVCs continues until the last week to the elections.

“So, if anybody register in the CVR before Aug. 31, the person is entitled to have his or her PVCs before the 2019 General Elections,’’ he said.

Ononamadu noted that INEC had put all machineries in place to ensure that Incident Forms were not used again since PVCs would be made available for all.

According to him, the move to stop Incident Forms is being discussed seriously at the national level.

“So, anybody who did not collect his or her PVCs, may be someone who did not present himself or herself for the collection in the first place since we don’t give out PVCs by proxy,’’ he added.