The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said four weeks into the online pre-registration of voters, over one million Nigerians have registered as of Monday July 26, 2021.
According to INEC, the number of new registrants has now risen to 1,006,661.
National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Barrister Festus Okoye, disclosed this in a statement.
Okoye said the detailed distribution of the registrants by age, state/FCT, gender, occupation, and disability for week four of the exercise has been uploaded to the Commission’s website and social media platforms.
He noted that the distribution by age still shows that 740,063 (or 73.5%) were young Nigerians between the ages of 18 and 34.
”As earlier announced by the Commission, physical or in-person registration begins today, Monday 26th July 2021 at our 811 State and Local Government Area offices nationwide. The exact locations of the designated centres have already been uploaded to our website and social media platforms.
For further details, citizens are encouraged to contact our State offices through the dedicated telephone numbers provided in the uploaded publication.
”Nigerians who pre-registered online can now complete their registration at those centres based on scheduled appointments. In addition, other Nigerians who prefer to register physically/in person can now do so at those centres.
The commission said further that both online pre-registration and physical/in-person registration will continue simultaneously until the suspension of the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise on 30th June 2022 to enable the commission to clean up the data and compile the voters’ register for the 2023 general election.
”The right to vote begins with the registration of voters. Thus, as we enter the next phase of the CVR exercise, we once again appeal to all citizens who wish to register to approach any of the commission’s state or local government area offices nationwide to do so.
”Once again, we wish to remind citizens that the ongoing registration does not include those already registered as voters. The current exercise is only open to Nigerians who are 18 years and above who have not registered before. It is an offence under the Electoral Act for any citizen to register more than once”, the statement read.
