A human rights organization under the aegis of Youth Empowerment Solutions Project Initiatives popularly known as YES Project on Tuesday raised concern over the number of Permanent Voters Cards not yet collected saying it was a recipe for disenfranchisement in the 2023 election.

To check the trend, Yes Project said it would ensure that 60 percent of young voters collect their PVCs for them to vote in 2023.

The organization, therefore, called on young Nigerians to come out en masse to collect their Permanent Voters Cards during the duration stipulated by the Independent National Electoral Commission to enable them to vote during the 2023 general elections.

The Executive Director of Yes Project, Oche-Precious Edeh, said getting registered was the first step in the electoral compliance process as stipulated by INEC and the Nigerian constitution.

To ensure PVCs are collected, Edeh said YES Project would create more awareness on the collection of voter cards, and where to pick up the cards.

According to him, the move was imperative to galvanize the inclusion of youths in politics.

“To change this trend and ensure that 60 percent of young voters collect their PVCs and vote, YES Project came up with various initiatives to surmount the challenge”, he stated.

He said Nigeria has around 200 million population with young person around 15 to 35 accounting for the highest demography of the population.

Edeh said that through the efforts of INEC as well as civil society organizations like YES Project, a lot of young people participated in voter registration.

He said the register witnessed the registration of youths between ages 18 to 34 making up a total of 7,286,871 accounting for 76.56 percent of the total newly registered voters of 9,518,188.

“It is quite shocking when in September this year, INEC confirmed that the number of uncollected PVCs is over 20 million. There is a need for us to tactfully engage the youths through the community to ensure they complete the electoral process of transitioning from PVC registration to collection and voting.

“With a total of 93,522,272, the number of uncollected PVCs account for 19.2 percent of registered voters. We need to keep the pace of engaging citizens, especially youths in politics”, Edeh said.

He listed social media promotion and door-to-door PVC mobilization campaigns as one of such interventions to create more awareness on PVC collection and where to pick it up.