The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says extending the voter registration exercise will hamper its preparations for the 2023 general elections.
The Akwa Ibom state Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Mike Igini, while making this known in a statement on Friday, August 5, said, “Now that we have officially ended the continuous voters registration (CVR) process, the commission would begin to scrutinise the voters registers to clean up possible incidents of double registration, print permanent voters cards (PVC), display of voters registers across polling units, among others.
“We can only achieve this by producing the preliminary register of all applicants, which means we would be working on a list which contains millions of prospective voters.
“This is the reason why the continuous voters registration (CVR) was brought to an end.
“Moreover, we needed to close the registration process in order to enable the commission carry on with their other constitutional responsibilities in the entire wards and local government areas of the federal republic of Nigeria,” he added.
Igini explained that after this process, the electoral umpire will also produce and distribute the Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) to the new registrants in due time, Channels TV reports.
Igini further noted that section 17 of the electoral act only mandates the commission to stop voter registration less than and not exactly 90 days to the election.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) official said Nigerians should rather be concerned about voters turnout in the next election despite the outcry that greeted the suspension of the registration.
Igini, however, expressed satisfaction with the recent wave of enthusiasm by Nigerians in the electoral process, likening it to what happened in the country in the lead-up to the 1993 poll.
Recall that prior to his comment, the electoral body had suspended voter registration on July 31, 2022, saying 12 million persons were newly registered.
A breakdown of the data showed that about 71 percent of the newly registered voters are youths.
It also indicated that 8.7 million are between the ages of 18 and 34, while about 2.4 million are between ages 35 and 49.
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