Ngozi James
Nearly 40 million Nigerians may not be able to participate in the 2023 General Elections following fresh revelations by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, revealed at a press conference on Wednesday that about 45 percent o registered voters have invalid registrations and would not be included in the register of voters ahead of the 2023 election.
As at 2019, there were 84,004,084 registered voters in the country as of 2019.
“Sadly, it seems that many registrants, either out of ignorance that they do not need to re-register if they had done so before, or a belief that our systems will not detect this infraction, have gone out to register again. This is despite repeated warnings by the Commission against this illegal action. In addition, there are also registrants whose data were incomplete and did not meet our Business Rules for inclusion in the register. Both categories i.e. the failure of ABIS and incomplete data constitute invalid registrations.
“Presently, nearly 45% of completed registrations nationwide are invalid, rising to as high as 60% or more in some States. This infraction happened in all States of the Federation. No State is immune from it. These invalid registrations will not be included in the Register of Voters.
“In our commitment to transparency, the distribution of the registration figures, including the percentages of valid and invalid registrations on State-by-State basis, will be made available to you at this press conference. The same information will be uploaded to the Commission’s website and social media platforms immediately,” Yakubu said.