2023 Election: INEC Presents Voter Register To Political Parties, Election Timetable Sacrosanct
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on Wednesday presented a soft copy of the updated voter register to the 18 political parties in the country.
The presentation was made when the INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, met with the leadership of these political parties at the commission’s headquarters in Abuja.
At the meeting which is the first this year, Yakubu presented the 2023 voter register to the parties ahead of the elections as required by the 2022 Electoral Act as well as pledged the Commission’s preparedness to conduct a free fair, and credible election in the country next month
Those in attendance at the meeting included leaders of the All Progressives Congress, the Peoples Democratic Party, the Labour Party, and the New Nigeria People’s Party, amongst others.
The nation’s electoral body disclosed that after the cleaning up of its data from the last Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise (June 2021 – July 2022), 9,518,188 new voters were added to the previous register resulting in the preliminary register of 93,522,272, which was presented to Nigerians for claims and objections as required by law.
However, at the end of the period for claims and objections by citizens, the Commission said it received 53,264 objections from Nigerians to the prevalence of ineligible persons on the register by virtue of age, citizenship, or death.
The INEC chairman said the 53,264 names have been verified and removed from the register. Consequently, the final list of registered voters stands at 93,469,008.
Of this cumulative figure, he said 49,054,162 (52.5 per cent) are male while 44,414,846 (47.5 per cent) are female.
According to him, the distribution by age group shows that 37,060,399 (39.65 per cent) are youth between the ages of 18 and 34; 33,413,591 (35.75 per cent) are middle aged persons between the ages of 35 and 49; 17,700,270 (18.94 per cent) are elderly voters between the ages of 50 and 69 while 5,294,748 (5.66 per cent) are senior citizens aged 70 and above.
He said, “In terms of occupational distribution, students constitute the largest category with 26,027,481 (27.8 per cent) of all voters, followed by 14,742,554 (15.8 per cent) Farmers/Fishermen and 13,006,939 (13.9 per cent) housewives.”
Recalled that the data on disability was not collected for previous registration, he, however, said the cumulative figure of 85,362 persons from the recent CVR indicates that there are 21,150 (24.5 per cent) persons with Albinism; 13,387 (15.7 per cent) with physical impediment and 8,103 (9.5 per cent) are blind.
The INEC chairman said with the presentation of the voter register, the commission has successfully implemented 11 out of the 14 activities scheduled for the 2023 general elections.
The INEC chairman also declared that it is not contemplating any adjustments to the timetable of the 2023 general election, stressing that February 25 and March 11 dates for the presidential/national and governorship/ state assembly elections respectively remain sacrosanct.
He also seized the occasion to distance the commission from a statement credited to a Director of the commission suggesting that the poll is facing a possible threat of cancellation due to security concerns.
Prof Yakubu explained that the position presented by the staff does not reflect the position of INEC. and hence should be disregarded.
Stressing the sanctity of the scheduled dates for the polls, the INEC chairman disclosed that already substantial quantities of both sensitive and nonsensitive materials have started arriving in the various states with 44 days left to the opening of the ballot on February 25.
