The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Wednesday announced additional 9,518,188 eligible registrants in the national register of voters that will be used for this year’s general elections.
INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, disclosed this in Abuja during a meeting with the leadership of the nation’s 18 registered political parties, where the new register was formally presented to them.
The presidential and National Assembly elections will be held on Saturday, February 25, 2023; the governorship elections in 28 states for all state assemblies will be held on Saturday March 11, 2023.
The INEC boss added that for the 2019 general elections, Nigeria had a voter population of 84,004,084, and that after the cleaning up of the data from the last Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise (June, 2021 to 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.
Yakubu said, “At the end of the period for claims and objections by citizens, the commission received 53,264 objections from Nigerians to the prevalence of ineligible persons on the register by virtue of age, citizenship or death. These names have been verified and removed from the register.
“Consequently, the register of voters for the 2023 general elections stands at 93,469,008. Of this cumulative figure, 49,054,162 (52.5 per cent) are males while 44,414,846 (47.5 per cent) are females.”
He added that the distribution by age group showed that 37,060,399 (39.65 per cent) were youths between the ages of 18 and 34; 33,413,591 (35.75 per cent) were middle aged persons between the ages of 35 and 49; 17,700,270 (18.94 per cent) were elderly voters between the ages of 50 and 69, while 5,294,748 (5.66 per cent) were senior citizens aged 70 and above.
