Ahead of Saturday’s Presidential and National Assembly elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission has released the total number of Nigerians eligible to vote.
A document released to correspondents on Thursday at a media briefing by the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, gave a total estimate of 89,209,007 as total number of Nigerians that collected their Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs).
The document also revealed 6,259,229 as the total number of Uncollected PVCs.
Checks revealed that the Chairman of INEC had last January at a meeting with the leadership of the political parties gave as several registered voters.
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Lagos, Kano, Kaduna and Rivers exceeded the list of registered voters, in that order.
In the new data, Lagos and Kano still maintain their first and second position with the topmost number of collected PVCs. Lagos has 6,214,970 and Kano has 5,594,193. Kaduna and Katsina came third and fourth with 4,164, 473 and 3,459,945, collectively.
Additional checks revealed that both North West and Southwest retain the regional lead with 21,445,000 and 15,536,213, collectively.
The northcentral-political zone has 14,603,621 as the total number of collected PVCs while North East has a total estimate of 11,937,769 as collected PVCs. Southeast has 10,401,484 while the South-South has 13,284,920.
Addressing the gathering of correspondents and election watchers, the INEC Chairman assured that his Commission has made adequate preparation in terms of logistics to ensure flawless conduct of the elections.
He said ”This election is a huge logistical deployment. We’ve painstakingly carried, organised and delivered all the materials to the States for deployment. We commenced the delivery ofnon-sensitive materials over two months ago and they’ve been batched down to Registration Area/Ward and Pulling Unit levels.
Sensitive materials have been delivered to the States and are presently being delivered to our Original Government Area offices. As similar, these materials are only between one and two levels away from the Polling Units.
We’ve achieved this by learning from our recent tough experience with logistics.
We’ve completed arrangements with the transport unions for the final leg of the movement of workforce and materials to the Polling Units. They’ve assured us of their readiness to give all the vehicular requirements of the Commission for the election.
Yakubu also restated that his leadership and the entire staff of his Commission would remain non-partisan.
Eventually, I want to assure Nigerians that we’re adequately prepared for this election. We remain completely committed to a free, fair and believable process.
I want to once again declare that our steadfastness is only to Nigerians. Our commitment is to ensure that in this election we put everything in place for free choice, fair contest and believable result.
Regional spread of Collected PVCs:
Northwest 21,445,000
Southwest 15,536,213
North Central 14,603,621
North East 11,937,769
South East 10,401,484
South 13,284,920
