 Ahead of 2023 general elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, says it will be working with security agencies to improve the accessibility of the permanent voter's cards. INEC National Commissioner and Chairman Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, in an exclusive interview with Bloss TV Africa, also hinted that the agency has retired the use of smart card readers and introduced a new technology for better operations in the coming elections. Jacinta Obiku has more. 72.7 million collected their permanent voter's card before the 2019 general elections, according to the nation's electoral body. This represents 86.3 percent of the over 84 million registered voters in the country. According to INEC, the percentage of the registered voters as at March 2019 stands at 49.78 percent. INEC National Commissioner and Chairman Voter Education Festus Okoye said the commission is taking voter education very seriously, especially in the registration of the permanent voter's card. In the next few days and few weeks, we are going to have a meeting with the security agencies and with the key players in the electoral process in terms of rolling out to the 8809 registration areas in the country to give access to more people for purposes of registration and also to take the registration much more closer to the people. Okoye confessed how challenging and resource-wasting it is for the agency and the entire country when peavuses are not collected. I want to appeal to Nigerians that the commission spends money, the country spends money to print these permanent voter's cards and when we spend money to print them and we spend money in terms of paying registration officers to go for the purposes of distributing some of these permanent voter's cards and people do not come to collect. It doesn't pay well of us as a people and as a country. So I think that we must realize the power in the PVC and make sure that we collect permanent voter's cards if we have taken the pains to carry out registration. Earlier, a chieftain of the People's Democratic Party, Bode George, had suggested that INEC adopts the U.S. electoral system come 2023. The system we must use must be a proven system, system that has been used, tested and proven. We know a country that had just concluded their election and they used a system that was near-perfect. That is the kind of system we should buy. Okoye has a response to this. We have retired the smart card reader permanently. So we are not going to be hearing about the smart card reader anymore. This is because technology evolves. What we now have is what we call the bimodal voter accreditation device, or the beavers. So this is the gadget we are going to be using from now on. And we are hopeful that these beavers will last us for at least two or three electoral cycles. And we just plead with Nigerian politicians and the political parties and the candidates that they should go back to the grassroots. They should go and come fast for votes. They should go and appeal to the electorates for votes. Because any politician or any political party or any candidate that thinks that he or she can manipulate the electoral process through crowdsourcing and through trying to manipulate the processes of accreditation will receive the shock of his or her life. Ekete and Noshu state are by now preparing for their governorship election. Perhaps a testing ground for INEX plants and new technology. Justice, one leg, fairness, one leg, and equity. These are the three tripod which the democratic dispensation and the platform sits. Okoye insisted that though the commission is promised in electronic voting and collection of results, it will not be at the comfort of people's homes yet, as it is a long-term project. Jacinta Ubuku for PLOS TV Africa. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.