By EHIGIMETOR IGBAUGBA

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says only 499 prospective voters have completed their registration in the ongoing Continuous Voters Registration (CVR) in Cross River as at Thursday.

The state office of the commission, however, noted that a total of 4,055 persons have registered for the online version of the exercise.

The spokesman of the INEC in Cross River, Mr Odaro Aisien, stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Calabar on Friday.

NAN recalls that the INEC Kick started this year’s CVR exercise with the online registration on Aug. 18, while the physical capturing commenced on 25.

The commission said those eligible to register or update their details include new voters aged 18 and above who have not registered before and holders needing to replace lost or damaged Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).

Others include voters seeking to transfer their registration to a new location and people who need to update or correct their voter information.

According to the INEC, over 1.3 million Nigerians completed their online pre-registration for voter cards within the first week of the exercise.

NAN reports that prior to the ongoing CVR, Cross River had a total of 1,766,466 registered voters.

The distribution of the voters shows that male and female gender has 50.6 percent and 49.4 percent, respectively.

Similarly, the number of collected PVCs is 1,672,810, which represents 94.7 percent and uncollected PVCs of 93,667, representing 5.3 per cent. (NAN)