One hundred and eighty-seven candidates from 12 political parties are jostling for the 25 available seats in the Cross River House of Assembly in the 2023 general elections.

This was disclosed by Cyril Omorogbe, resident electoral commissioner of the state at a news conference in Calabar.

He also disclosed that 11 political parties fielded 69 and 28 candidates for the eight house of representatives seats and the three senatorial seats respectively.

He said 11 political parties would fight for the governorship position,d adding that Cross River had 322,351 new registrants in the just concluded voters registration.

“The total completed registration recorded in the state at the close of Continuous Voters Registration (CVR) is 322,351 as well as 58,305 voter transfers and 20,822 PVC replacements,” he explained. “A total of 73 Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Voter Enrolment Devices were deployed to the 19 registration centres in Cross River state (i.e. the 18 LGA offices and the state office) during the exercise.” 

On Permanent Voters Card (PVCs) collection, Mr Omorogbe said collection would continue in all the local council offices of the state, while 69,016 PVCs remained uncollected from 2011 to date.

He expressed regret that the collection rate of the PVCs was low, considering that it was just six months to the general elections.

“PVCs collection will continue in all the LGA offices. PVCs collection by owners was one of the services carried out by our staff alongside the CVR,” he added. “A total of 27,158 new PVCs were received by the state commission in April for distribution to their owners but at the close of registration, only 3,897 were so far collected by voters, leaving an outstanding balance of 23,261.”

According to him, this set of PVCs is for people that registered from June to December 2021, noting that from the old PVCs left over from 2011 to 2018, out of 57,310 PVCs only 11,555 have been collected “during this period under review with an outstanding 45,755 still not collected.”

Meanwhile, INEC has fixed February 25, 2023 for the presidential and national assembly elections and March 11 2023 for governorship and state parliamentary elections.

Campaigns are expected to commence on September 28 and October 12 for the presidential/national parliamentary polls and governorship/state assembly elections respectively.

(NAN)