INEC Pegs Eligible Voters At 93m, Cancels 2m Registrations

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has finally pegged the number of eligible voters for the 2023 general elections at 93,522,272.

This comprises the existing 84,004,084 registered voters and 9,518,188 new ones.

According to the Commission, the display of the physical register will take place at the designated centres from November 12-25, 2022.

The Commission disclosed that at the end of the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR), 12,298,944 Nigerians completed the exercise but a total of 2,780,756, representing 22.6% were invalidated.

INEC Chairman Professor Mahmood Yakubu made the disclosures during a quarterly meeting of the Commission and political parties in Abuja.

He said: “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”.

The INEC Chair however stated that 23 registration officers that participated in the just-concluded CVR were indicted of misconduct,

According to him: “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. 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. 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.”