The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) stated that between April 2017 and March 2018 when the Continuous Voter Registration began 6, 906, 411 Nigerians registered to vote
The total number of registered voters in the country to 75, 739, 887.
Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, the Chairman of INEC, declared these findings at a civil society colloquium organised by the Independent Service Delivery Monitoring Group in Abuja on Tuesday.
INEC had revealed that 5, 162, 289 Nigerians had registered by the end of January. The new figure implies that in less than two months, over 1.74 million Nigerians have registered.
Rivers had the highest number of newly registered voters followed by Anambra, Borno, Delta, Lagos, Cross-River, Osun, Enugu, Kano and Plateau.
He stated that a comprehensive list of the newly-registered voters would be published on the commission’s website before the end of the month.
Yakubu described the high number of registration as a laudable achievement because approximately seven million people would have been disenfranchised in the 2019 general elections.
In his remarks, Chima Amadi, convener of the colloquium, described the progress recorded by INEC under its new leadership as an indication of an organisation responding positively in the build-up to the 2019 general elections.
Amadi said, “It is our considered opinion that INEC has been the most responsive of all government agencies involved in the election value chain, taking advice and constructive criticisms and adjusting its activities to reflect same.
“This much cannot be said about others within that chain, the security agencies continue to behave true to type and are even getting worse, while political gladiators continue with their manipulative stock-in-trade.
“However, we are resolved to take them to task with the same resilience that we used in getting INEC to act properly, for the 2019 elections.”