The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says the number of registered voters in Nigeria has risen from 84,004,084 to 93,522,272 following the addition of 9,518,188 newly registered voters.

INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, said this at the third quarterly meeting with political parties for 2022 on Wednesday in Abuja.

Mr Yakubu said the figure was preliminary as sections 19(1) and (2) of the Electoral Act 2022 required the commission to display the hard copies of the voter register for each ward and local government area.

He added that INEC was also required to simultaneously publish the entire register on its website for two weeks for scrutiny, claims and objections by citizens not later than 90 days before a general election.

“Accordingly, in the next few days, the commission will print 9,352,228 pages of the register.

“The display of the physical register will take place at the designated centres from Saturday, November 12, to Friday, November 25.

“Further details, including the procedure for filing claims and objections, would be released by the commission next week,’’ he said.

Mr Yakubu appealed to the electorate to seize the opportunity of the display to scrutinise the list and help INEC to clean it up further so that the final register of voters for the 2023 general election can be compiled and published.

He said 12,298,944 Nigerians completed the registration as new voters during the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR), which started on June 28, before its suspension on July 31.

Mr Yakubu said after a rigorous cleaning-up of the data using the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS), 2,780,756 (22.6 per cent) were identified as ineligible registrants and invalidated from the record.

The INEC chairman said those affected were double/multiple registrants, under-aged persons and outrightly fake registrations that failed to meet the commission’s business rules.

“Consequently, the number of valid registrations (post-ABIS) is 9,518,188.

“In terms of demographic distribution, 7.2 million new voters or 76.5 per cent, are young people between 18-34 years, while there is a slightly higher number of females (4.8 million or 50.82 per cent) than males (4.6 million or 49.18 per cent) voters.

“In terms of occupation, 3.8 million (40.8 per cent) are students. Hard copies giving the full details of the distribution of the new voters are included in your folders for this meeting.

“The soft copy has already been uploaded to the commission’s website and social media platforms,’’ he said.

He said INEC was working to ensure the completion of printing of remaining PVCs for new voters and those that applied for transfer or the replacement of their lost or damaged cards.

Mr Yakubu said in the coming days, INEC would inform Nigerians of its detailed plans to ensure a seamless collection of the PVCs.

He said INEC had successfully implemented nine of the 14 activities for the 2023 general election.

The INEC chairman added that the commission was making steady progress in other critical areas of preparations for the election.

This, according to Mr Yakubu, includes the provision of sensitive and non-sensitive materials, the recruitment of staff and planning for the movement of personnel and materials for the election.

Mr Yakubu said the incidence form would not be used in the 2023 general election, saying there was no going back on technology deployment for the election.

“On this note, let me once again reassure Nigerians that there is no going back on the deployment of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for voter accreditation.

“There is no going back on the transmission of results to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) in real-time on Election Day.

“We are committed to ensuring that the 2023 general election is transparent and credible, reflecting the will of the Nigerian people,’’ he said.

(NAN)