The Independent National Electoral Commission’s chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, revealed on Wednesday that the number of registered voters has increased to 93.5 million.
The states with the most registered voters are Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Rivers, Katsina, and Oyo, according to an analysis of the preliminary register.
Lagos has 7.57 percent, Kano has 6.34 percent, Kaduna has 4.65 percent, Rivers has 3.77 percent, Katsina has 3.76 percent, and Oyo has 3.51 percent, according to a breakdown, 27.68 million, or 29.59 percent, of all registered voters are in the six states.
Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, and Rivers states are in first place with 7,075,192, 5,927, 565, 4,345, 469, and 3,532, 990 votes, respectively, according to the preliminary voter list, following them are Oyo, with 3,275,045, and Katsina, with 3,519,260.
With a total of 22.27 million registered voters, the North-West geographic zone, which includes the seven states of Kano, Katsina, Kaduna, Kebbi, Sokoto, Zamfara, and Jigawa, has the highest voter turnout.
The North-West had 20,15 million voters as of the 2019 elections. However, according to INEC data, the zone registered 2.12 million more voters during the just-completed continuous voter registration period.
With the addition of 1.64 million freshly registered voters, the South-West, which had 16.29 million voters as of 2019, now has 17.93 million voters.
South-South zone
The South-South zone, which includes the states of Akwa-Ibom, Rivers, Cross-River, Bayelsa, Edo, and Delta, is in third position.
The zone now has 14.4 million registered voters, an increase from 12.8 million.
There are now 13.8 million voters in the North-Central region, which includes Nasarawa, Kogi, Benue, Niger Kwara, and Plateau, while there are 12.5 million voters in the North-East region, which includes Yobe, Borno, Taraba, Adamawa, Bauchi, and Gombe.
The Federal Capital Territory saw an increase in voter registration from 1.3 million to 1.5 million, while the South-East, the smallest geographic zone and composed of five states (Ebonyi, Enugu, Abia, Anambra, and Imo), currently has a total of 10.9 million voters.
Lagos increased its number of registered voters from 6.5 million to 7.07 million, keeping its title as the state with the most voters, Kano State saw a gain of 469,818 voters, bringing the total to 5.9 million.
While Rivers State surpassed Katsina to become the fourth-largest state in terms of voters, Kaduna currently has 4.3 million registered voters, Katsina has 3.51 million voters, compared to 3.53 million in Rivers.
The INEC chairman mentioned that the majority of the new registrants were young people when speaking to the political parties during their meeting in Abuja.
Yakubu continued, “In terms of demographic distribution, 7.2 million new voters, or 76.5 percent, are young individuals between the ages of 18 and 34, and there are slightly more female voters (4.8 million, or 50.82 percent), than male voters (4.6 million, or 49.18 percent). 3.8 million people, or 40.8% of the population, are students.
“The 84,004,084 voters already on the rolls have had their names added to the 9,518,188 new voters. There are currently 93,522,272 registered voters in Nigeria.
In accordance with sections 19(1) and (2) of the Electoral Act 2022, he stated that not later than 90 days prior to the general election, the hard copies of the voter registers for each registration area and local government area would be displayed and concurrently published on the commission’s website for two weeks.
The commission will provide more information, such as the process for submitting claims and objections, the following week, he added.
Accordingly, the Commission will print 9,352,228 pages of the register over the course of the next few days, Yakubu added.
The whole register will be published on our website for claims and objections as required by law, and the printed copy will be exhibited for each of the 8,809 Registration Areas (wards) and 774 local government areas across the country.
The actual register will be displayed at the designated locations from November 12 through November 25, 2022. I would like to make a call to action to all Nigerians to take advantage of the display to examine the list carefully and assist us in further cleaning it up so that the official voter list for the general election of 2023 may be created and released.
Yakubu unveiled that the cleanup of register the led to the discovery of 2,780,756 fake registrants.
You might recall that the CVR, which began on June 28, 2021, ran for 13 straight months before being suspended on July 31, 2022. 12,298,944 Nigerians were successfully registered as new voters at the end of the process.
We have consistently informed Nigerians that the process we are using to clean up the register is reliable.
“Following a thorough data cleanup using the Automated Biometric Identification System, a total of 2,780,756 (22.6%) were identified as ineligible registrants and removed from the record, including double/multiple registrants, individuals under the age of 18, and outright fake registrations that don’t comply with our business rules. As a result, there are 9,518,188 legitimate registrations (post-ABIS).
Yakubu disclosed that some registration officers participated in the field exercise carried out phony registrations, adding that in some situations, some of them made as many as 40 attempts to register one false voter.
“As a result, disciplinary action has started against 23 registration officials that the Commission has so far identified as being involved in this unethical activity. He vowed, “We will keep up our defense of the accuracy of our voter list.
The head of INEC added that the Commission was putting in a lot of effort to guarantee that the last of the Permanent Voter Cards were printed for new voters as well as those who requested transfers or replacements for their lost or damaged cards.
He added, “We will also tell Nigerians of the entire plan to enable a seamless collecting of the PVCs in the coming days.
We are aware that Nigerians anticipate a change in the PVC collection process. We have been striving to make sure that citizens have a positive experience when they come to collect their cards ever since the CVR ended in July of this year.
He reminded his audience of the schedule that had been made public for the November 11, 2023, dates of the three off-cycle governorship elections in the states of Bayelsa, Imo, and Kogi.
