Youths on 76% still dominate despite reduction to 93.5m registered voters
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Data cleanup by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has reduced the Voters’ Register from 95 million to 93,522,272 comprising 84,004,084 existing registrants and 9,518,188 new ones.
Youths still dominate with 76% new registrations.
INEC Chairman Mahmood Yakubu disclosed the figures at a quarterly meeting with political parties in Abuja, where he announced the physical register will be displayed in all wards between 12 and 25 November.
He said 12,298,944 participated in the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) which ended in July but 2,780,756 or 22.6 per cent were invalidated.
Yakubu disclosed “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.
“In terms of occupation, 3.8 million (40.8%) are students. Hard copies giving the full details of the distribution of the new voters are included in your folders for this meeting. The soft copy has already been uploaded to the Commission’s website and social media platforms.”
“At the end of the exercise, 12,298,944 Nigerians successfully completed the registration as new voters. All along, we have repeatedly assured Nigerians that our process of cleaning up the register is robust.”
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“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, among them double/multiple registrants, underaged persons and outrightly fake registrations that fail to meet our business rules,” Yakubu added, per The Nation.
“Consequently, the number of valid registrations (post-ABIS) is 9,518,188.
“The Commission deployed thousands of diligent staff for the CVR exercise and the vast majority of them discharged their duties conscientiously. Unfortunately, a few of them did not.
“The fictitious registrations were carried out by some of our Registration Officers involved in the field exercise and could easily be traced. Each registration machine is operated using an access code tied to a dedicated e-mail assigned to staff.
“The 9,518,188 new voters have been added to the existing register of 84,004,084 voters. The PRELIMINARY register of voters in Nigeria now stands at 93,522,272.
“It 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.”
Display of voters’ register
Yakubu disclosed the INEC will display the hard copy of the register of voters in all wards between 12 and 25 November 2022, per additional reporting by The PUNCH.
“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 25th November 2022.
“Further details, including the procedure for filing claims and objections, will be released by the Commission next week.”
Yakubu urged Nigerians to scrutinise the list and help clean it up further so the final register of voters for the 2023 general election can be compiled and published.
