The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Joash Amupitan, has disclosed that most of the Permanent Voter Cards for Nigerians who registered during the third and final phase of the Continuous Voter Registration exercise are being printed outside the country, explaining that international production protocols are responsible for the delay in distributing the cards.
Amupitan made the disclosure during a press briefing in Abuja on Monday, where he also announced the removal of over 1.6 million invalid and deceased records from the national voter register ahead of the 2027 general elections .
Addressing the timeline for the outstanding PVCs, Amupitan said: “Some of the PVCs for the third and final phase have been delivered, and they will be dispatched to the states next week” .
“Those that are available because most of those things are printed outside the country, and then because of some of those international protocols, all the phase one, phase two, transfer cases have been delivered” .
He explained that cards for voters registered during the first and second phases, as well as those who requested transfers, had already been delivered. However, the commission was still expecting a larger batch of PVCs belonging to people who registered during the final phase.
“Now the third phase, some of them are already on ground, and then we’ll have a bulk of most of the last phase. That’s those that registered in the last phase. They will be ready for distribution to the states, delivery, dispatch to the state by next week” .
Amupitan appealed to affected registrants for patience: “We appeal to those that registered in the third phase to be a little bit patient, since the production is done outside Nigeria” .
The INEC chairman announced that distribution of PVCs would return to Registration Areas across the country from December 1, 2026.
“Meanwhile, as from 1st December, 2026, distribution will go back to the registration areas from the local government all over Nigeria” .
The briefing also served as a platform for INEC to announce a major cleanup of the voter register. Amupitan said 1,609,553 names were removed, comprising 1,608,660 invalid registrations and 873 records belonging to deceased voters .
He attributed the discoveries to an audit conducted with the commission’s Automated Biometric Identification System after the preliminary voters’ register was displayed for public scrutiny between October 9 and 15 .
The review also exposed internal complicity. Amupitan revealed that an investigation had identified 54 commission employees across 10 states over alleged involvement in irregular registration activities, including multiple registrations, suspicious enrolment patterns and the substitution of applicants’ photographs .
A total of 2,970,257 Nigerians registered during the third phase of the CVR exercise before the commission’s de-duplication process .
The disclosure that PVCs are produced abroad raises questions about the commission’s preparedness ahead of the 2027 general elections and the logistics of voter card distribution.
It also comes amid broader scrutiny of INEC’s handling of the voter register, with the commission itself acknowledging that it is still examining old duplicate entries dating from 2011 to 2023. Amupitan said flagged records would be removed after verification .
The commission maintained that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, which authenticates voters through fingerprints or facial recognition and requires physical presence, remained central to preventing multiple voting and unlawful accreditation .
