93.4 million Nigerians eligible to vote in February, March polls, says INEC

The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, disclosed on Wednesday that eligible voters in 2023 elections now stand at 93.4 million.

He spoke while presenting voters registers to the various political parties at a meeting held at the commission’s headquarters.

Yakubu said in accordance with the 2022 Electoral Act, the commission has compiled 93,469,008 eligible voters for the forthcoming elections.

The updated register sees Lagos lead with the highest number of eligible voters with 7,060,195 up by over 500,000 new registered voters compared to 6,570,129, in 2019, with Kano also having over 500,000 newly registered voters 5,921,370 (5,457,747 in 2019) and Kaduna having over 400,000 newly captured voters, 4,335,208 (3,932,492 in 2019).

Persecondnews recalls that in 2019 INEC had announced 84 million as the total number of registered voters up by 15 million if compared with 2015 which was 68 million.

Youth ages 18-34 make up majority of the voters with 39.66 percent of the voters with a figure of 37,060,399.

By gender distribution, the number of male voters stands at 49,054,162, while female voters stand at 44,414,846.

However, there are over nine million newly registered voters, a shortfall from INEC target of 20 million projected voters in June 2021 by the INEC Chairman.

“When it comes to voter registration, we expect perhaps higher crowd. Between 2017 and 2018 when we did the last voter registration, 14.2 million Nigerians registered.

“This time around, we are projecting something much higher anywhere between 16 and 20 million,” Yakubu said.

In terms of occupation, Nigerian students lead the with 26,027,481 voters.