No fewer than 1,379,342 Nigerians have registered in the nationwide online pre-registration of voters phase of the Continuous Voter Registration(CVR), which started last Monday and ended on Sunday.
INEC national commissioner and chairman of its Information &Voter Education Committee Sam Olumekun, in a statement on Monday, said that 717,856 (52.04%) of the total number are female. In comparison, 661,846 (47.96%) are male.
He explained that: “young people between the ages of 18 and 34 constitute the majority of the registrants with 860,286 (62.37%).
“In terms of occupation, 374,534 (27.15%) are students, while the figure for persons with disability is 27,089 (1.96%).
“As promised, the commission is glad to publish the first weekly update of the exercise by providing details of the registration by State, gender, age, occupation and disability.”
Olumekun stated that the physical registration kicked off INEC’s 811 state and local government offices nationwide.
“This will afford those who prefer the in-person option to register at the centres and those who choose the online pre-registration method to complete their registration.
“Once again, the commission appeals to the public that the ongoing voter registration is only open to Nigerian citizens who are at least 18 years old and who are not registered voters. Double or multiple registration is a violation of the law.
“However, inter-State/FCT and intra-State/FCT transfer of voters, as well as the replacement of lost or damaged voters’ cards, are allowed during the CVR.
“The exercise will continue for one year until 30th August 2026. However, the Commission urged all intending registrants not to wait until the deadline approaches when, from experience, the registration centres are inundated by eleventh-hour registrants amidst appeals for extension of time,” he added.
Meanwhile, the in-person voter registration exercise kicked off at designated centres across Kwara State.
Though there was an impressive turnout of the eligible residents, the exercise was marred by a poor network in some registration centres visited by our correspondent.
At about 12:40, people were seen at the Ilorin West local government area office of INEC waiting to be attended to at the commission’s gate.
When asked why they were standing at the gate, one of them said, “We were asked to come back on Wednesday”.
Further inquiry made by our correspondent showed that the exercise kicked off slowly due to a network issue.
In addition, prospective voters were attended to by the commission’s staff at its headquarters in Ilorin, who allowed them into the premises in batches of five.
The exercise took place simultaneously with a stakeholder meeting at the INEC headquarters in Ilorin, with representatives of political parties, civil society organisations, media, and security agencies in attendance.
The INEC resident electoral commissioner in the state, Dr Hale Longpet, warned against underage registration, saying that the commission has put in place mechanisms to detect such.
On the issue of network challenges, the head of information technology at the INEC office in Ilorin, Yunusa Musa, confirmed that the commission had received many complaints of hiccups occasioned by network glitches.
He, however, gave the assurance that the exercise will improve as soon as the service providers rectify the situation.
“INEC doesn’t have its own network; we rely on our service providers for the network,” he said.
