INEC: Why 7 million Nigerians won’t be able to vote in 2023
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has given reasons why as many as seven million Nigerians will not be able to vote in the 2023 general elections.
INEC said over seven million Nigerians who carried out their voter pre-registration online did not complete the process at physical centres.
INEC revealed this as the continuous voter registration exercise (CVR) ended on Sunday.
In June 2021, the electoral body began the CVR exercise and launched a portal where Nigerians can register by filing in their biodata and required documents, after which they will visit INEC designated centres to complete the process physically.
Going to a physical centre where biometric capturing would be done was a prerequisite to complete the voter registration process.
According to data released by the commission, 10,487,972 Nigerians carried out their pre-registration online.
But INEC said out of this number, only 3,444,378 Nigerians representing 32.8 percent, completed the process at a physical centre.
This means 7,043,594 persons representing over 67 percent of those who began their registration process online, are not eligible to receive a voter card before the 2023 general election and will therefore not be able to vote.
Although INEC said a total of 12,298,944 Nigerians completed their voter registration, 8,854,566 of that number were individuals who did their registration entirely at a physical centre.
INEC had fixed June 30 as the deadline for the CVR ahead of the 2023 elections, but extended it till July after a federal high court in Abuja stopped the commission from ending the exercise, and following several pleas by Nigerians and civil society organisations (CSOs).
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