Opinion

[EDITORIAL] As INEC Ended Voters Registration Too Soon

Published

3 years ago

May 5, 2022.

As the Continuous Voters Registration, VCR, exercise was closed on Sunday, July 31 across the country, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has again ruled out the chances of many Nigerians, particularly young people making frantic efforts to register for and obtain their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) with a view to exercising their franchise during next year’s general election.

Previously, INEC had, in accordance with the election timetable, planned to end voter registration on June 30. However, a Federal High Court in Abuja stopped it from taking that course of action. Justice Mobolaji Olajuwon granted an order of interim injunction following the hearing of an argument on motion ex parte by a rights group, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP).

EDITOR’S PICK:

In conjunction with some concerned Nigerians, SERAP had filed a suit against INEC, asking the court to “declare unconstitutional, illegal, and incompatible with international standards, the failure of the electoral body to extend the deadline for voter registration to allow eligible Nigerians to exercise their rights.”

The commission formally extended the exercise and directed all the states’ Resident Electoral Commissioners and local government Electoral Officers to continue with the exercise pending further directives from the Commission.

INEC had on June 28, 2021, when it flagged off the CVR projected registering about 20 million new voters and having at least 100 million voters for the 2023 general election more than the 87 million that participated in the 2019 polls.

The INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, had ahead of the commencement of the CVR, said while 14. 2 million voters were registered during the 2017 – 2018 CVR; the commission was projecting to register between 16 and 20 million voters in the 2021-2022 exercise.

Reiterating this, INEC, National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Dr Festus Okoye, in an interview with BusinessDay said the commission was targeting a minimum of 20 million additional registrants in the ongoing nationwide CVR exercise to increase the total number of voters to more than 100 million in the country.

He said the Commission would carry out the physical registration of voters within a period of one year in 2, 673 centres nationwide.

According to him, “For the current exercise, the Commission is targeting at least 20,000,000 new registrants. So many of our young men and women are enthusiastic about our online registration portal and we believe that it will ease congestion in our registration centres.”

However, at the close of the VCR exercise on Saturday, July 30 fresh registration stood at 12.2 million voters. According to INEC, it registered 12, 298,944 voters, which increased Nigeria’s registered voters from 84,000, 484 recorded in the last 2019 election cycle to 96,299,428.

With the 12 million new registered voters, INEC fell short of the 20 to 36 million new registrants it set out to achieve. The final tally may still review downward by the time the commission completes its clean-up of the data to ensure that only eligible Nigerians are registered to vote in the election. This is an indication that millions of Nigerians will be disenfranchised, thus jeopardising the integrity of the 2023 general election.

While the registration was extended beyond June 30, some Nigerians were of the opinion that the extension will give them more opportunities to register and vote for candidates of their choice in the 2023 general election.

The extension also gave politicians and their candidates, the chance to mobilise prospective voters, especially in their strongholds to get enrolled and obtain PVCs to vote for them at the polls.

INEC too, despite its earlier fears, now has the window to work towards meeting its target of registering about 20 million voters and populating the voters’ register with at least 100 million voters.

This media platform, EKO HOT BLOG, commends INEC for acceding to the calls by Nigerians to extend the registration time. This reduced the tension and agitation that built up in the polity. However, we consider the recent closure of the registration process too early still as more time can be made for eligible Nigerians who are yet to register so they could fulfil their civic duty.

We pray INEC allows the 20 to 36 million new registrant Nigerians to complete their registration, as the body noted that Nigerians need to complete the process to partake in the 2023 general elections.

As a result, INEC must take this issue very important and see it as an opportunity to give all its support to this political consciousness and awakening the nation has witnessed into a historic outcome, as the voter apathy that usually attended elections in the country would not be the case in 2023.

We believe voters’ registration should be an ongoing activity that should not be pegged to date, and against setting a cutoff date the process can continue till 2 to 4 weeks before the election so as to enable eligible citizens to register or update their registration before election day.

Considering the challenges, we call on INEC to again extend the registration till the end of the year as that will suffice to capture the huge number of persons willing to register and get their PVCs before the forthcoming 2023 elections.

Clearly, INEC were not necessarily going by Section 9(6) of the Electoral Act 2022 which provides that: “The registration of voters, updating and revision of the Register of Voters under this section shall stop not later than 90 days before any election covered by this Act”. Going by this provision, the Electoral umpire is still within time to continue registration way beyond 31st July as communicated by INEC. The registration period can be legally and conveniently extended to 30th October 2022.

Identified areas of concern in the electoral process, which are voters’ registration, printing and distribution of PVCs, mentioned by INEC that necessitated the early closure of the process deserve urgent attention. It is therefore expected to do more for the entire process to proceed more effectively and successfully.

The elementary action that INEC needs to take if it really wants to register every or most of the qualified and willing citizens is to release all or most of the electoral biometrics registration capture machines to all the Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Nigeria paying special attention to major cities and towns of Nigeria and the whole South East region especially.