INEC registers 6.8 new voters – mostly students, housewives, business people
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Youths constitute about 69.7 per cent of newly registered voters with housewives also making their mark in the desire to obtain Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) for the 2023 ballot, says the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The number of registered voters has risen from 84,004,084 in 2019 to about 90.8 million in June 2022.
New registration was done between June 2021 and May 2022 during which about 4.8 million or 69.7 per cent of new registrants were youths (mostly students), business people, and housewives.
INEC Deputy Director of ICT Bimbo Oladunjoye gave the figures during the Commission’s first Twitter Spaces tagged, ‘Importance of youth participation in the electoral process’.
Those who attended the event included several youths and
- INEC National Commissioner and Chairman of its Information and Voter Education Committee Chairman Festus Okoye
- INEC Chairman Chief Press Secretary Rotimi Oyekanmi
- YIAGA Africa Executive Director Samson Itodo
- Programme Manager, Democracy and Rule of Law, European Union Delegation to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Laolu Olawumi
Oladunjoye said 1.1 million were invalid out of the 2.5 million registrations done by January 2022.
“Since that January, we have been registering people,” she recounted.
“As of 6pm [on 2 June] we have had about 19.7 million applications on the system, meaning people who visited our portal and office to either do a transfer, request for the reprint of the PVCs, done their full registration, reviewed their data or carried out an update on their record.
“Out of the 19.7 million applications, 6.8 million of such applications have been completed, out of which almost 4.8 million are youths. That represents about 69.7 per cent of the 6.8 million registrants. And it’s almost equal in terms of gender. We have 49.6 per cent females and 50.4 per cent males.
“In terms of occupation, we realised that about 2.3 million of the 4.8 million youths that registered are students. That’s about 50 per cent of the youths that registered during this particular registration. That is followed by business persons, which is about 14 per cent.
“Interestingly, we have housewives at 11 per cent, which means 11 per cent of youths who have newly registered are housewives. This implies that the youths are already on the move to ensure that they get to vote in the forthcoming elections.”
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INEC portal serves several purposes
“Also, Nigerians can do a lot of things on the CVR portal; you don’t need to go to INEC office to transfer your voting station, retake your picture, update your details, like change of name after marriage, change of address, lost PVCs, review or registration or to identify where INEC machines are.
“These can be done on the portal,” Oladunjoye added, according to The PUNCH.
Young voters hold the key to electoral victory
Itodo stressed the need for people to register, collect their PVCs and vote, adding that he is fascinated by the percentage of youths who have registered.
His words: “The truth is that 2023 election is very important for a lot of reasons. While young people are registering to vote, not a lot of them come out to vote.
“Before 2019, there were about 51 per cent of young people on the voter register, but the sad part is that we have not made our number as young people count in elections.
“In the 2019 elections, only 28 per cent of young people showed up in the presidential election and 29 per cent in governorship elections.
“The 2023 elections present us an opportunity to participate in the process and get the leaders we want. Without sounding like a cliché, the 2023 election is about the battle for the soul of our country.
“A lot of young people are angry about the leadership at different levels. They want a new form of leadership and they want young people in office, so there is that determination.
“But the only way we can get the leadership we want as young people is by registering to vote and voting. Staying away won’t help us.
“I say with all sense of responsibility that votes now count in Nigeria. Gone are those when voters would be at the polling units and results would be declared in Abuja.
“You cannot compromise the process like before. There are new technological innovations, like BVAS and IRev, that INEC has introduced that helps in protecting the sanctity and integrity of the votes.”
Itodo urged the youth to rise up and “salvage the country from the hands of the oppressors and bad leaders that have held us hostage at every level. People should elect competent people, devoid of every form of ethnicity and religion.
“If we fail to seize the opportunity that 2023 presents us, we will have ourselves to blame.”
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