2023 election will hold as scheduled, INEC assures Nigerians

“In short, at no time in the recent history of the Commission has so much of the forward planning and implementation been accomplished 44 days ahead of a General Election.

“Therefore, the commission is not contemplating any adjustment to the election timetable, let alone the postponement of the General Election.

“For the avoidance of doubt, the Presidential and National Assembly elections will hold on Saturday, Feb. 25, 2023, while Governorship and State Assembly elections will hold two weeks later on Saturday, March 11, 2023.

“The repeated assurance by the security agencies for the adequate protection of our personnel, materials and processes also reinforces our determination to proceed.

“The 2023 General Election will hold as scheduled. Any report to the contrary is not the official position of the Commission.’’

Ineligible persons on voters’ register
On the registered voter, Yakubu said after the cleaning up of the data from the last Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) from June 2021 to July 2022, where 9,518,188 new voters were added to the existing 84,004,084 voters, the preliminary register of voters was 93,522,272.

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He said that when the register was presented to Nigerians for claims and objections as required by law, INEC received 53,264 objections from Nigerians to the prevalence of ineligible persons on the register by virtue of age, citizenship or death, which were verified and removed from the register.

“Consequently, the register of voters for the 2023 General Election stands at 93,469,008. Of this cumulative figure, 49,054,162 (52.5 per cent) are male while 44,414,846 (47.5 per cent) are female.

“The distribution by age group shows that 37,060,399 (39.65 per cent ) are youth between the ages of 18 and 34; 33,413,591 (35.75 per cent ) are middle-aged persons between the ages of 35 and 49; 17,700,270 (18.94 per cent ) are elderly voters between the ages of 50 and 69 while 5,294,748 (5.66%) are senior citizens aged 70 and above.

“In terms of occupational distribution, students constitute the largest category with 26,027,481 (27.8%) of all voters, followed by 14,742,554 (15.8 per cent ) Farmers/Fishermen and 13,006,939 (13.9 per cent) housewives.

“The data on disability was not collected for previous registration. However, the cumulative figure of 85,362 persons from the recent CVR indicates that there are 21,150 (24.5 per cent ) persons with Albinism; 13,387 (15.7 per cent ) with physical impediment and 8,103 (9.5 per cent) are blind.”

Yakubu said that the softcopy of the breakdown and analysis would be uploaded to the INEC website and social media platforms shortly.

He reiterated INEC’s commitment to a transparent, credible and inclusive 2023 General Election, saying INEC would continue to take every step to protect the sanctity of the votes cast by citizens and to deal with infractions. (NAN)/Daily Trust