Why is it that the registration of voters cannot continue until one week to the date of election? That is one of the most frequently asked questions on the official website of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
This goes to give an inkling of some Nigerians’ understanding of the continuous voter registration (CVR). The CVR is designed to capture young Nigerians who have attained 18 years and have not been registered to vote.
The last time the CVR exercise was conducted was in 2018. However, with the next general election set to be conducted in February 2023, INEC resumed the CVR in June 2021 on both its online portal and registered physical centres in a bid to enfranchise the youth population and to update the voter register used for the 2019 polls.
The INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, told reporters last year that the commission aims to register 20 million new Nigerian voters by June 2022. The online pre-registration portal was launched to achieve this target.
Online voter registration exercise ended on 30 May, 2022, while the continuous physical voter registration is scheduled to end on 30 June, 2022.
Although civil society organisations (CSOs) are advocating for the CVR exercise to continue, INEC has stated that extending the deadline for permanent voter card (PVC) registration would disrupt other scheduled activities on its timetable for the 2023 elections.
INEC, on its website, noted that registration of voters and the update or review of the voters’ lists must stop at least 30 days before any election and the register to be used for the election must be certified.
The electoral umpire said this will enable the commission to clean up the registration data, print the PVCs and compile the register ahead of next year’s elections.
However, according to Section Nine of the Electoral Act 2022, registration of voters, updating and revision of the register of voters under this section shall stop not later than 90 days before any election.
This means INEC can afford to extend the CVR to September 2022 without breaching the electoral law or disorganising the timetable for the 2023 general election.
CSOs, including the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), have been calling on INEC to provide more time for eligible voters, including people living with disability, as well as those resident in states facing security challenges and living in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps to register and participate in the 2023 elections.
‘Extending the deadline for voter registration would be entirely consistent with constitutional and international standards, and the electoral act. Any such extension would also not impact negatively on the INEC’s election calendar and activities’, SERAP said in a statement.
In February 2022, the House of Representatives equally urged INEC to extend the timeframe for voter registration.
Data from INEC shows that only 6.5 million new voters had completed their PVC registration in May 2022. In April 2022, the electoral umpire also noted that nearly 45 percent of completed new registrations nationwide were invalid, rising to as high as 60 percent or more in some states.
If INEC does not extend the deadline for registration, the target of the electoral umpire to register at least 20 million new Nigerian voters before the 2023 polls will not be actualised. Failure to extend the deadline will also mean Nigerians who might be galvanised by the emergence of their choice candidates in the ongoing primary elections might be disenfranchised in 2023.
Additionally, extending the CVR exercise will allow voters mobilisation projects of several CSOs, including the recently launched #SixtyPercentOfUs initiative by Yiaga Africa, aimed at mobilising at least 60 percent of eligible young voters to register, to achieve their goals.
Photo source: CDD West Africa
