2023: Northwest, South-South lead as INEC registers 12m Nigerians

Following the suspension of the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR), which commenced on June 28, 2020, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), yesterday, announced that the number of fresh registrants that completed their registration stood at 12,298,944.

The Commission had ended the exercise on Sunday, after a one-month extension from the initial June 30 deadline.

A notice on the website reads: “The CVR exercise has been suspended. Access to log-in to check the status of your completed applications will soon be restored.”

According to INEC, the exercise has been suspended till after the 2023 general elections.

INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, on June 28, 2021, flagged off the resumption of the online CVR, starting with the opening of the online registration portal, which was followed by the applicants’ physical registration on July 26, 2021, after the 2019 general elections.

“The number of registrants who have completed online and physical registration was 12,298,944, made up of 6,074,078 males and 6,224,866 females of which 87,083 were people living with disabilities (PWDs) and 8,784,677 youths,” the report said yesterday.

A breakdown of the figure by The Truthonline revealed that of the fresh registrants, 6,359,711 came from the North, while 5,939,233 reside in the South, indicating a disparity of 420,478.

Going by geo-political zones, the Northwest recorded the highest with 2,514,273 new registrants, while the South-South trails closely with 2,458,095 applications. The North-Central followed with 2,314,368 completed registration, while Southwest has 2,039,982.

Also, about 1,531,070 applications came from the Northeast while the Southeast has the least completed registration with 1,441,156.

A state-by-state breakdown revealed that Lagos and Kano have the highest number of new registrants with 585,620 and 569,103 respectively. Delta followed closely with 523,517 applications with Yobe and Ekiti recording the lowest with 152,414 and 124, 844 applications.

The Commission also warned Nigerians to be wary of fake voter registration websites online.

INEC National Commissioner and Chairman of Information & Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, said the warning followed the discovery of an online site urging Nigerians to enrol for voter card and PVC registration, claiming that the Federal Government has approved individual voter card registration online to avoid the unnecessary crowd in the NIMC centres.

Okoye said the site is not linked to the Commission and the link/portal is spurious and from a dubious source.

According to him, INEC is the only body constitutionally and legally mandated to conduct the registration of persons qualified to vote in any election in Nigeria and to update and revise the register when the need arises.

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