At least 10 million Nigerians have been registered in the ongoing nationwide Continuous Voter Registration (CVR),the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced yesterday.
Chairman of the INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, said at the commission’s quarterly consultative meeting with security agencies under the auspices of Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES) in Abuja that the people were registered between April, 2017 when the CVR commenced and end of June, 2018.
The 10m has now taken the total number of registered voters to 80 million.
“As at June 22, 2018 fresh registration was 9,922,619, PVC Collection, 576,346; request for transfer, 489,354 and request for replacement of PVCs, 766,435,” Yakubu said.
“What this means is that since the commencement of CVR on April 27, 2017, about 10 million Nigerians have been registered and this will be added to existing register of 70 million voters.
“This means that as we approach 2019 general elections, Nigeria will have voter register of at least 80 million.”
Yakubu reiterated INEC’s commitment to transparency in the conduct of elections and the declaration of results.
He said that one of the things the commission had consistently been doing was to issue copies of elections’ result sheets to agents of political parties at that level.
He said that following stakeholders’ demand for transparency in the electoral process, INEC responded by displaying result for each polling unit immediately after counting of ballots for public information.
“Having found this as a useful way of enhancing citizens’ mandate protection, we took it a step further by introducing the EC60E.
“The form is a large poster reflecting the result in each polling unit as recorded on the EC8A shared with agents of political parties,” the chairman said.
In his response, the National Security Adviser (NSA), Major-Gen. Mohammed Monguno (rtd), pledged that necessary security support would be given to ensure the success of the Ekiti governorship election and 2019 general elections.
Monguno, who was represented by Assistant Inspector-General of Police, Mrs Peace Abdallah, expressed confidence that the INEC would continue to conduct credible elections.
