New Telegraph

CVR: Young Nigerians, students lead in INEC online voter registration

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said 66 per cent (totalling 356,777) of 542,576 online registrants are young people between the ages of 18 and 34 years. Also, 156,446 of the registrants are students, followed by businessmen and traders who are 150,145 in number. INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, who gave the statistics at a meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs), expressed the commission’s satisfaction with Nigerians’ response to the online pre-registration exercise, which began on June 28. Yakubu said 134,719 of the new registrants were people between 35 and 49 years, while elderly persons between 50 and 69 years were 44,896.

He said: “Interestingly, some 6,184 senior citizens (aged 70 years and above) have taken advantage of the new online opportunity to register.” According to him, farmers and fishermen are not left out, stating 24,421 of the registrants are in this category. Occupational distribution of other registrants such as artisans 38,217; civil and public servants 35,831, and housewives 8,334.

He added: “The remaining 129,182 registrants did not specify their occupations,” just as he disclosed that 321,781 of the registrants were male, while 220,795 were female. He said: “In our effort to serve all Nigerians better, the commission has requested registrants to indicate their disability (if any). “This will enable us to optimally and efficiently deploy assistive voting devices such as Braille ballot guide and magnifying glasses for persons with special needs at polling units on election day. So far, we have data for 6,558 registrants who have clearly indicated their type of disability.”

Yakubu further stated that INEC was aware that not all Nigerians have access to computers, smart phones or internet connectivity to register online, and assured that there will be an opportunity for physical or in-person registration at designated centres. He said: “Even the online registrants will have to complete their registration physically at those centres. Our aim is to activate some 2,673 centres to which we intend to deploy 5,346 officials for inperson registration.”

Read Previous

INEC: Senate rejects Lauretta Onochie

Read Next

Nigeria to get 41.2m vaccines in 2 months – NPHCDA

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *