The 84 million voters on the current voter list have been increased by a total of 9.518 million, according to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), making 93 million people eligible to vote in the general elections scheduled for 2023.
The announcement was made by INEC Chairman Prof. Mahmood Yakubu on Wednesday in Abuja at the Commission’s quarterly meeting with political parties.
He also reaffirmed the Commission’s earlier commitment to holding credible, open, free, and transparent elections in 2023.
Prof. Yakubu said that notwithstanding implied criticism, the decision to use technology in the form of the enabling laws-approved Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV), and Electronic Transmission of Election Results would not be changed.
He provided information about the demographics of the new registrants, noting that 7.2 million, or 76.5%, of the new voters are under the age of 34.
“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 females (4.8 million or 50.82%) than males (4.6 million or 49.18%) voters. In terms of occupation, 3.8 million (40.8%) are students”, he said.
As he pleaded with Nigerians to assist in the cleaning up of the voter register, he stated that the precise number of voters who will determine the faith of politicians in 2023 would become obvious after the preliminary 93 million were submitted to the scrutiny of Nigerians via claims and objections.
“The display of the physical register will take place at the designated centres 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. 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.”
Prof. Yakubu laments that some dishonest registration officers tried to carry out bogus registrations despite the commission’s efforts to ensure a legitimate CVR exercise.
He revealed that the commission’s internal audit had identified roughly 23 of the offenders, who are now being disciplined.
“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 a staff.
“There is therefore an audit trail that gives the total number of persons registered by each official involved in the registration exercise. In some case, some of them made as many as 40 attempts or more to register one fake voter. As a result, the Commission has so far identified 23 Registration Officers involved in this unethical conduct and disciplinary action 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.”
