Why Over 7m Online Voter Applicants Will Not Vote Next Year – INEC

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says over seven million Nigerians will not be eligible to exercise their franchise next year.

This is as the continuous voter registration exercise (CVR) came to an end on Sunday.

The electoral umpire said the affected persons are those who carried out their voter pre-registration online but did not complete the process at physical centres.

In June 2021, the commission began the CVR exercise and launched a portal where Nigerians can register by filling in their biodata and required documents, after which they will visit INEC-designated centres to complete the process physically.

Going to a physical centre where biometric capturing would be done was a prerequisite to completing the voter registration process.

According to data released by the commission, 10,487,972 Nigerians carried out their pre-registration online.

But INEC said out of this number, only 3,444,378 Nigerians representing 32.8 percent, completed the process at a physical centre.

This means 7,043,594 persons representing over 67 percent of those who began their registration process online, are not eligible to receive a voter card before the 2023 general election and will therefore not be able to vote.

Although INEC said a total of 12,298,944 Nigerians completed their voter registration, 8,854,566 of that number were individuals who did their registration entirely at a physical centre.

INEC had fixed June 30 as the deadline for the CVR ahead of the 2023 elections but extended it till July after a federal high court in Abuja stopped the commission from ending the exercise, and following several pleas by Nigerians and civil society organizations (CSOs).