The figure of registered voters in Nigeria now is 84.3 million, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has disclosed.
INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, made this known on Thursday when he addressed Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) in Abuja.
He however said the figure might drop slightly after the Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) on the newly registered voters.
Giving the breakdown, he said the commission recorded 14.6 million of registered voters between April 2017 and August 2018 and 69.7 million registered voters before the 2015 general elections.
He explained that the current figure represented about 21 per cent increase on the existing figure.
He called on Nigerians to make use of the opportunity presented by the ongoing nationwide display of particulars.
His words: “On this note, let me also appeal to Nigerians to seize the opportunity of the ongoing nationwide display of the particulars of new voters for claims and objections as required by law.
“By doing so, citizens will be helping the commission to further clean up the register and purge it of all ineligible registrants as required by Section 12 of the Electoral Act.”
He added that the commission was already processing 769,917 requests for intra and inter-state transfers.
He said 1.2 million requests for replacement of lost, damaged or cards with misspelt names or incorrect personal details of voters were also being attended to.
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“This means that the commission has to print a total of 16,500,192 Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) and make them available for collection by citizens ahead of the 2019 general elections.
“Already, the commission has printed the PVCs for those registered in 2017 and delivered them to states for collection,” he stated.
He explained that the PVCs for 2.7 million voters registered in the first quarter of 2018 had been printed.
He said they would be delivered to the states next week.
“We shall ensure that the process of collection is simplified with minimum inconvenience to citizens. We will also ensure that information about the collection of PVCs is widely disseminated.
“Already, we are partnering with telecommunication companies to send bulk text (sms) messages to citizens for the collection of their PVCs,” Yakubu said.
