The Continuous Voters Registration (CVR) conducted nationwide by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) ended on Sunday. INEC initially scheduled the exercise to end on 30 June, but bowed to pressure from many Nigerians and civil society organisations, including the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), clamouring for an extension of the deadline. Ending the exercise at the earlier scheduled date, the agitators said, would lead to the disfranchisement of many Nigerians willing to vote in the 2023 elections. The extension of the deadline to 30 July came days after SERAP obtained an order from the Federal High Court in Abuja stopping INEC from going ahead with its plan to end the voter registration exercise on 30 June. The exercise ended on the expiration of the new deadline on Sunday.
Easterner brings to you 16 important things to know about the outcome of the just-concluded CVR.
- INEC said it registered 12,298,944 voters during the just-concluded CVR exercise. This increased Nigeria’s registered voters from 84,000,484 recorded as of the last 2019 election cycle to 96,299,428. The number of registered voters for the 2015 elections was 69,288,117.
- Of the total 12.2 million new voters, at least 8.7 million of them are within the youthful age bracket of 18 to 34. About 2.4 million of them are between the ages of 35 and 49. A total of 856, 017 are between the ages of 50 to 69, while the rest of 127,541 persons are 70 and above.
- The released data pegged the number of female registrants at 6,224,866 while the male folks came close with 6,074,078.
- The three states with the highest number of newly registered voters are Lagos (585,629), Kano (569,103), and Delta (523,517).
- Ekiti State (124,844), Yobe State (152,414) and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja (211,341) have the least numbers of fresh voters.
- With a little above 12 million new registered voters, INEC fell short of the 20 to 36 million new registrants it set out to achieve.
The commission had set out to raise the 84 million registered voters as of 2019 to at least 120 million voters ahead of the 2023 elections.
- The final tally may still be reviewed downward by the time INEC completes its cleaning up of the data to ensure that only eligible Nigerians are registered to vote in elections.
- After completing the earlier data clean-up for the first and second quarters of the exercise, INEC printed 1,390,519 PVCs for genuine new registrants and another 464,340 PVCs for verified applicants for transfer or replacement of cards. A total of 1,854,859 PVCs were sent to the commission’s offices nationwide for pickups.
- Nearly 45 per cent of completed registrations nationwide for the first and second quarters were invalid. This is an indication that there may be a significant drop in the 12.2 million new voters recorded in the last phase of the CVR at the end of the anticipated clean-up.
- PVCs for people who registered between January and June would be ready in October, while those who registered from 1 to 31 July would collect theirs in November.
- The North-west geopolitical zone, made up of Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Jigawa, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara States, now has 22.67 million registered voters, the highest recorded in any of the six geo-political zones in the country.
- The South-west which is made up of Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Ondo, Osun, and Ekiti States, has the second highest number of voters, which is18.3 million.
- The South-south region, comprising Bayelsa, Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Cross River and Edo States, has 15.2 million registered voters.
- The North-central, comprising Kwara, Kogi, Plateau, Benue, Niger, and Nasarawa states, has 14.1 million voters.
- The North-east, made up of Borno, Adamawa, Yobe, Bauchi, Taraba and Gombe States, has 12.8 million registered voters.
- The South-east, made up of Imo, Anambra, Ebonyi, Abia, and Enugu States, has the least number of registered voters with 11.49 million persons from the region captured in INEC’s register of voters.
