Nigeria’s voter population hits 84m

INEC says 1.38m PVCs uncollected in Lagos
Nigeria now boasts of over 84 million voters that can participate in the 2019 general elections, according to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

At the conclusion of the last phase of the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) last week, the commission recorded 14,551,482 new voters.

Add this figure to the existing 69,720,350 voters, it means that the nation now has a voter population of 84,271,832.

Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, noted yesterday in Abuja that the figure might drop slightly after the Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) exercise.

The INEC boss added that the number of those who took part in the CVR represented a 21 per cent increase in the number of eligible voters in the country.

He urged Nigerians to maximise the opportunity of the ongoing nationwide display of the particulars of new voters for claims and objections as required by law.

Yakubu stated that this would help the commission to further purge the register of all ineligible registrants as required by Section 12 of the Electoral Act.

“The commission has consistently shared information on the voter registration exercise with Nigerians by publishing the figures as well as detailed breakdown by states and gender. After running the AFIS, the commission shall present a detailed analysis of the voter register, not only by state and gender, but also by age group and occupation.”

He added that PVCs collection would continue until one week to the 2019 general elections.

Meanwhile, the commission has lamented that 1.38 million PVCs are still uncollected in Lagos State.

The Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Sam Olumekun, gave the figure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos yesterday.

“We still have about 1.38 million PVCs uncollected as we speak. Only about 15 per cent of the 2017 new registrants whose cards have been produced have come to pick their cards. It is very poor.

“We have also added close to 750,000 new registrants, whose cards are still going to be produced and distributed.

“Of course, people who are coming to collect the ones (PVCs) newly printed for those who registered in 2017 are more than those whose cards had been there since 2011 elections,” he said.