In the general elections of 2023, 187 candidates from 12 political parties are running for the 25 seats up for grabs in the Cross River House of Assembly.
At a news conference on Wednesday in Calabar, the state's Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Cyril Omorogbe, revealed this.
According to Mrs. Omorogbe, 69 and 28 candidates from 11 political parties ran for the three senatorial seats and the eight House of Representatives seats, respectively.
In addition to stating that 11 political parties would run candidates for governor, he also mentioned that Cross River had 322,351 new registrants from the just completed voter 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.
“A total of 73 Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Voter Enrolment Device (VED) were deployed to the 19 Registration Centres in Cross River State (i.e. the 18 LGA offices and the State office) during the exercise,” he stated.
Regarding the collecting of Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs), Mr. Omorogbe stated that collection would continue in all of the state's Local Government Area (LGA) offices, even though 69,016 PVCs had not yet been collected as of 2011.
Given that the general elections were only six months away, he expressed disappointment that the PVC collecting rate was so low.
"PVCs collection will continue in all LGA offices," he stated. One of the services provided by our team in conjunction with the CVR was the collecting of PVCs by owners.
“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.
“This set of PVCs is for people that registered from June to December 2021.
“From the old PVCs that are left over from 2011 to 2018; we have on record 57,310 PVCs but only 11,555 have been collected by their owners during this period under review with an outstanding 45,755 which is still not collected.”
While appealing for support from the political parties and their candidates ahead of elections, he urged the people to collect their PVCs.
“I pledge that we will continue to work hard to deliver free, fair and credible elections come 2023,” he stated.
The Presidential and National Assembly Elections were scheduled for February 25, 2023, and the Governorship and State Assembly Elections were scheduled for March 11, 2023.
The presidential/NASS and governorship/state assembly campaigns are anticipated to start on September 28 and October 12, respectively, according to the commission's timetable of general election operations.