The total number of registered voters in Nigeria may have risen from 84 million to 96.2 million, REPORTERS AT LARGE have learnt.
The latest voter statistics released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) state that 12.2 million voters registered in the Continuous Voter Registration that ended on Sunday.
According to INEC, the North-West geopolitical zone, which comprises the seven states of Sokoto, Zamfara, Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Kebbi, and Jigawa, has the highest number of registered voters, with 22.67 million.
As of the 2019 elections, the North-West had 20.15 million voters. However, the latest report released by INEC showed that 2.5 million new voters registered during the recently concluded continuous voter registration, bringing the total number of registered voters in the zone to 22.67 million. The South-West, which had 16.29 million registered voters earlier, now has 18.3 million, adding 2,039,982 new registered voters. The zone includes Lagos, Ogun, Osun, Oyo, Ekiti and Ondo.
The third position is the South-South, which comprises Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Cross River, Bayelsa, Edo, and Delta states. The number of registered voters in the zone has risen from 12.8 million to 15.2 million.
The North-Central which is made up of Nasarawa, Kogi, Benue, Niger, Kwara and Plateau, now has 14.1 million voters. In contrast, the North-East which is made up of Yobe, Borno, Taraba, Adamawa, Bauchi and Gombe, added 1.5 million new voters to reach 12.8 million registered voters.
The South-East, the smallest geopolitical zone, consists of five states—Ebonyi, Enugu, Abia, Anambra, and Imo—and now has 11.49 million voters, while the number of registered voters in the Federal Capital Territory has increased from 1.3 million to 1.5 million.
Lagos maintained its position as the state with the highest registered voters, increasing its figure from 6.5 million to 7.1 million. Kano State also maintained its second position, adding 569, 103 new voters to increase to 6.02 million.
Kaduna State now has 4.4 million registered voters while Rivers State has now overtaken Katsina as the fourth largest state in terms of voters. While Rivers now has 3.68 million voters, Katsina has 3.57 million.
Some other states with a sizeable number of registered voters are Delta (3.3 million) and Oyo (3.3 million) Also, Ekiti retained its position as the state with the lowest number of registered voters despite rising from 909, 967 registered voters to 1, 034, 911.
Youths make up 71% of new voters, women outnumber men
A breakdown of INEC’s report also showed that about 71 per cent of the newly registered voters are youths. Of the 12.2 million newly registered voters, about 8.7 million are between 18 and 34, while about 2.4 million are between the ages of 35 and 49. Those between the ages of 50 and 69 are about 856, 017 while about 127 541 are over 70.
The statistics also showed that more women registered during the latest CVR than men. While 6,224,866 are women, 6,074,078 are men.
