Ahead of next month’s elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has released the final list of registered voters for the upcoming polls.
In the list made available to political parties on Wedneaday, Lagos State has the highest number of registered voters with 7,060,195, followed by Kano State with 5,921,370.
The list showed that INEC registered 93, 469,008 voters for the general polls.
The 93,469,008 registered Nigerians will decide who will become the next president of Nigeria among candidates of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu; People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, Labour Party, Peter Obi and candidates of other parties in the 2023 presidential election.
The voter register also shows that Katsina State has 3,516,719 registered voters; Kebbi, 2,032,041; Kogi, 1,932,654; Kwara, 1,695,927; Nasarawa 1,899,244; Niger, 2,698,344; Ogun, 2,688,305; Ondo, 1,991,344; Osun, 1,954,800; Oyo, 3,276,675; Plateau, 2,789,528; Rivers, 3,537,190; Sokoto, 2,172,056; Taraba, 2,022,374; Yobe, 1,485,146, and Zamfara State, 1,485,146.
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Others are Abia 2,120,808; Adamawa, 2,196,566; Akwa Ibom, 2,357,418; Anambra, 2,656,437; Bauchi, 2,749,268; Bayelsa, 1,056,862; Benue 2,513,281; Borno, 2,513,281; Cross River, 1,766,466; Delta 3,221,697; Ebonyi, 1,597,646; Edo, 2,501,081; Ekiti, 987,647; Enugu, 2,112,793; FCT 1,570,307 Gombe, 1,575,794; Imo, 2,419,922; Jigawa, 2,351,298, and Kaduna, 4,335,208.
A breakdown of the number of eligible voters indicates that men constitute 52.5 per cent, while women make up 47.5 per cent of the total figure.
The nation’s electoral body disclosed that after the cleaning up of its data from the last Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise between June 2021 and July 2022, 9,518,188 new voters were added to the previous register resulting in the preliminary register of 93,522,272 which was presented to Nigerians for claims and objections as required by law.
However, at the end of the period for claims and objections by citizens, the commission said it received 53,264 objections from Nigerians to the prevalence of ineligible persons on the register by virtue of age, citizenship, or death.
INEC chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, disclosed this yesterday at the presentation of the national register of voters to political parties in Abuja.
Yakubu said the 53,264 names were being verified and removed from the register at the end of the clean-up of its data for claims and objections by citizens.
Consequently, the INEC chairman said the final list of registered voters stands at 93,469,008.
Of this cumulative figure, he said “49,054,162 (52.5 per cent) are male while 44,414,846 (47.5 per cent) are female.”
According to him, 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 percent) are senior citizens aged 70 and above.
He said, “In terms of occupational distribution, students constitute the largest category with 26,027,481 (27.8 per cent) of all voters, followed by 14,742,554 (15.8 per cent) Farmers/Fishermen and 13,006,939 (13.9 percent) housewives.”
He recalled that for the 2019 general election, Nigeria had a voter population of 84,004,084.