By Aaron Ossai
Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Mahmood Yakubu has announced that the preliminary register of voters in Nigeria now stands at 93,522,272.
Speaking at the third quarterly meeting with leaders of political parties for this year, Yakubu explained that 9,518,188 new voters were added to the existing 84,004,084 voters to bring the figure to 93,522,272.
According to the INEC boss, at the end the Continuous Voter Registration on July 31, 2022, 12,298,944 Nigerians successfully completed the registration as new voters but that after a rigorous cleaning-up of the data using the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS), a total of 2,780,756 (22.6%) were identified as ineligible registrants and invalidated from the record.
He said that among them are double/multiple registrants, under aged persons and out rightly fake registrations that fail to meet the Commission’s business rules saying “consequently, the number of valid registrations (post-ABIS) is 9,518,188.”
Speaking further, Yakubu said that in terms of demographic distribution, 7.2 million new voters or 76.5% are young people between 18-34 years while there is a slightly higher number of female (4.8 million or 50.82%) than male (4.6 million or 49.18%) voters adding that in terms of occupation, 3.8 million (40.8%) are students.
He also explained that the figure is preliminary because Section 19(1) and (2) of the Electoral Act 2022 requires the Commission to display the hard copies of the register of voters for each Registration Area (Ward) and Local Government Area (and simultaneously publish the entire register on the Commission’s website) for a period of two weeks for scrutiny, claims and objections by citizens not later than 90 days to a General Election.
“Accordingly, in the next few days, the Commission will print 9,352,228 pages of the register. The hard copy will be displayed for each of the 8,809 Registration Areas (Wards) and 774 Local Government Areas nationwide while the entire register will be published on our website for claims and objections as required by law.
“The display of the physical register will take place at the designated centers from Saturday 12th – Friday 25thNovember 2022. Further details, including the procedure for filing claims and objections will be released by the Commission next week.
“I would like to appeal to all Nigerians to seize the opportunity of the display to scrutinize the list and help us to clean it up further so that the final register of voters for the 2023 General Election can be compiled and published”, he added.
The INEC boss also disclosed that the Commission has so far identified 23 Registration Officers involved in various malpractices during the Continuous Voter Registration exercise and that disciplinary action against them has commenced.
“We shall continue to protect the integrity of our voters’ register. It is pivotal to credible elections. It is also a national asset and easily the largest database of citizens in Africa and one of the largest in the world”, he stated.
