KEY political gladiators are preoccupied with rallying support for their bid for choice elective offices in the 2023 general election despite the seeming lethargy by prospective voters towards the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration initiated in 2021 by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), reports WALE AKINSELURE.
Nigeria is presently in the third quarter of the Continuous Voters Registration (CVR) exercise that began on June 28, 2021. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared commencement of the CVR apparently in a bid to update the voter register used for the 2019 election that had 84,004,084 registrants. Ahead of the 2023 elections, the commission detailed quarterly schedules for the exercise with the first quarter running from June 28 to September, 21, 2021; the second quarter running from October 4 to December 20, 2021; and the current third quarter, which is in its seventh week, is scheduled to elapse in April.
The CVR is being done in compliance with the 2010 Electoral Act (as amended), which mandates the INEC to carry out CVR nationwide and to make available to every political party within 60 days. The CVR is meant for registration of citizens who turned 18 years of age after the 2019 election or those, who for one reason or another, could not register in the previous exercises. The CVR also allows for updating or amendment of registration details by registered voters: misspelt names, omissions or wrong details, amendment in marital status. The CVR is to culminate in the issuance of Permanent Voters Card (PVC) which will enable registered voters exercise their civic right to vote in the general elections. In embracing technology, the hitherto practice of intending registrants presenting themselves to the CVR officers at INEC offices or designated public areas for registration was substituted with the creation of a portal where intending voters do a pre-registration. In place of the previous laptop-based Direct Data Capture Machine (DDCM), the ongoing CVR involves the use of a new registration machine known as the INEC Voter Enrolment Device (IVED).
INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, however, added that the new device could also be used for other purposes such as voter registration during elections, dealing with registered voters who have had issues with their PVCs or fingerprints during accreditation during previous election. Expected to partake in the current CVR exercise are: Nigerian citizens who have attained the age of 18 years and not previously registered; Registered voters who have encountered challenges with their Permanent Voter’s Cards (PVC) or their fingerprints not being read by the Smart Card Reader; Registered voters who want to effect a transfer of their voting locations; Registered voters who want to effect changes to their personal details; Registered voters whose PVCs are lost or defaced/damaged. However, pre-registration is just one step with intending registrants still mandated to go to INEC state or local government area offices for their biometrics and completion of their registration?
To also address fears of those who are not digitally inclined, physically disabled or people living in rural areas without access to the Internet, the commission established 2,673 centres where citizens can register manually. Upon conclusion of CVR, INEC is expected to display a preliminary register of voters for scrutiny, between a period of five and fourteen days, clean up its data before printing PVCs.
2019 versus 2023
In the CVR exercise that preceded the 2019 elections, a total of 14.2 million Nigerians registered between 2017 and 2018. The CVR which started in April 2017 was supposed to end on 17th August, 2018 but was pushed to the last day of August 2018. The electoral body subsequently announced that it had a voter base of 84,004,084 going into the 2019 election. In the current voter register, used for the 2019 general election, Lagos State has the highest number with 6,570,291 registered voters, followed by Kano with 5,457,747 voters and Kaduna with 3,932,492 voters. Other states with high number of registered voters are Katsina with 3,230,230 voters; Rivers, 3,215,273 voters; Delta, 2,845,274; Benue, 2,480,131; Borno, 2,315,956; Imo, 2,272,293; Edo, 2,210,534; Jigawa, 2,111,106. Breakdown of voters by geo-political zones, the North West with 20,158,100 had the highest number of registered voters for the 2019 election followed by the South West which posted 16,292,212 registered voters. Continuing the order from highest to lowest, the North Central had 13,366,070 registered voters; South-South (12,841,279 voters); North-East (11,289,293), while the South-East has the lowest number of registered voters with 10,057,130.
Meanwhile, INEC at the outset of the current CVR exercise in June 2021 stated that it hopes to add at least 20 million new voters to its existing voter base. Yakubu said the registration would be carried out continuously for over a year until the third quarter of 2022. In June 2021 when the CVR was recommenced, Yakubu said: “When it comes to voter registration, we expect perhaps higher crowd. Between 2017 and 2018 when we did the last voter registration, 14.2 million Nigerians registered. This time around, we are projecting something much higher anywhere between 16 and 20 million.”
The latest statistics as of February 21st, 2022, that is Quarter three, week seven indicate that fresh registrants stand at 6,082,639 while number of those that have completed online and physical registration is 3,329,204. Presently, there are more male registrants than female registrants that have completed their registration. It stands at male: 1,675,318; female: 1,653,886 and Persons living with disabilities: 28,711. More youths within the 18-34 years age bracket have completed their registration while those from 70 years and above constitute the least registrants. The statistics shows: Youth (18- 34): 2,310,554; Middle aged (35-49): 695,398; Elderly (50-69): 283,916; Old (70 and above): 39,336.
The current statistics shows that more people in the southern part of the country have completed their registration compared to those in the northern part of the country. While 1,763,584 have completed their registration in the South, a total of 1,565,620 have completed their registration, in the North, as of February 21. As it has been since the start of the exercise, Osun State still has the highest number of those who have completed their registration with 259,726 registrants. Next in number of registrants is Delta with 188,919; then Bayelsa: 178,282; Rivers: 164,497; Kano: 162,859; Anambra: 141,719. Imo has the least number with 31,418 registrants. In terms of completed registration across the six geopolitical zones, the South-South is in the lead followed by the North-West, then the South-West, the North-Central, the North-East. The South-East has the least number of registrants for PVC so far. Specifically, the statistics by geopolitical zones are South-South: 806,636; North West (621,025); South-West (608,618); North-Central (536,042); North-East (408,553) and the South-East is 348,330. The ongoing CVR is yet to be concluded but the statistics so far shows there is an exponential drive in the South-South towards registration compared to the 2019 election. Like in 2019, the people of the North West, South-West and North-Central are still highly keen on voter registration. However, as in 2019, the people of the South-East are still least in number of people being registered as eligible voters at elections.
20 million new voter target: A tall order?
At outset of the present CVR in June 2021 projected having about 20 million new voters added to the present voter register. As of now, however, the projection looks a tall order as 6,082,639 have begun pre-registration while just over half of that number have completed both online and physical registration. At the present number of 3,329,204, the INEC projection of 20 million new voters is only about 20 percent achieved. By August that the CVR is expected to be rounded off, in preparation for the 2023 election, it will only take some geometric progression to be anywhere close to INEC projection. With dwindling voter turnout in elections, the INEC had, this time, adopted the online pre-registration and offline biometric capture at designated registration centres with the hope that the process of getting eligible Nigerians to register to vote is being eased. However, the turnout is still far from the projection. INEC had further noted that somewhat simplifying the CVR process will increase the number of eligible voters and, in turn, address the issue of dwindling voter turnout that has characterised elections in recent years. In what appears worrisome, the INEC is faced with both apathy towards CVR, collection of PVCs and turning out to vote on Election Day. In encouraging eligible Nigerians to register to vote, Resident Electoral Commissioners across states have embarked on sensitisation campaigns to various stakeholders like political parties, politicians, religious leaders, heads of media houses, non-governmental organizations, educational institutions, among others. The INEC is in sync with politicians and political parties who have been seen putting up various sensitisation items across various mainstream and digital platforms encouraging their constituents to register and collect their PVCs, albeit their political aspiration is central to this push. Among viral sensitisation messages are: “Almajiri has a PVC; Tea seller has a PVC; Cart pusher has a PVC; Fruit seller has a PVC; Kolanut seller has a PVC; Gateman has a PVC; Onion & Tomato sellers have PVCs; Shoe shiner has a PVC; Sugar cane seller has a PVC; Bus Drivers/Conductors have PVCs; Motor park Agberos have PVC; You (a student or a graduate with BSc or MSC) with all your education and exposure still don’t have PVC. The worst thing is that you even try to justify why you didn’t have one saying “my vote won’t count”. For the sake of those who paid your school fees and fed you through school, please, don’t make all your education/exposure useless with statements like that. If votes don’t count, politicians won’t bribe/pay people to vote them.” Still, the response of Nigerians to the CVR exercise has been average. Reasons have been given for CVR apathy to include inadequate sensitization by the various stakeholders on CVR or Nigerians are so oppressed and do not trust the nation’s electoral process. Meanwhile, while completion of registration for 2023 election is presently far from target, there is still the issue of many uncollected PVCs from the over N84 million registered by INEC for the 2019 election.
Why the CVR apathy
A survey by Statista, a database company, indicated that in 2021, about half of Nigerians were aware of the CVR exercise. In terms of geopolitical zone, the statistics then revealed that the lowest percentage of respondents who knew about the CVR was the South-East while the highest was the North-Central. Meanwhile, several Nigerians to include a former national secretary, Social Democratic Party (SDP), Dr Sadiq Gombe expressed displeasure at how the CVR is being executed. Gombe tasked the INEC to collaborate with the National Identity Management Commission to ease the voter registration and enable the country have a comprehensive data bank. He also urged the commission to make collection of the PVC easier by utilising post offices across the country as points of collection. Gombe questioned the registration figures, arguing that politicians rather than invest resources in voter registration and sensitisation were keen on jacking up the INEC figures to satisfy their electoral ambitions.
A political scientist of the University of Ilorin, Dr Gbade Ojo attributed apathy towards CVR to lack of sufficient publicity by both INEC and political parties. He also attributed apathy to the fact that Nigerians are presently pauperized to the point that they are more preoccupied with having their daily bread than giving attention to electoral issues. At the stage of PVC collection, Ojo urged the INEC to decentralise to ward level rather than limiting the collection to local government level.
Ojo said: “The ongoing exercise is not being given sufficient publicity by INEC while political parties are faced with a lot internal crises for them to even contemplate mobilising prospective electorate. At the end of the day, the number of new registrants may be infinitesimal.
“The greatest impediment, however, is the ongoing economic pains because of skyrocketing inflation. Young Nigerians are presently pauperised to the point that they are more preoccupied with survival instinct economically than the electoral issues that do not better their lots. Apathy usually begins with voters’ registration which is for now lukewarm. Interestingly, people waste a lot of precious time to collect at INEC LG offices. Instead of decentralisation for collection to be at ward levels, they expect all to travel to LG headquarters which may be quite a distance in many places across the country. The cost of transportation itself is a burden on the hapless Nigerians.”
ALSO READ FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
A former director, Distance Learning Centre, University of Ibadan, Professor Francis Egbokhare said the INEC appeared tired and that there was little to show that CVR is ongoing.
On his part, Dr. Bayo Busari, a lecturer of Mass Communication and Media Technology, Lead City University, Ibadan, said the apathy is borne out of the fact that Nigerians, both the government and the governed, are yet to fully imbibe the culture of democracy. Busari also pointed to a corrupt system where politicians connive with other electoral officials and other stakeholders tinker with the registration of voters. He, however, noted the need for all stakeholders: politicians, electoral umpires, non-governmental organisations, media professionals and other agencies to be awake to their responsibility of sensitizing citizens to be alive to fulfilling their civic responsibility by taking active interest in the registration exercise.
However, Oyo REC, Mutiu Agboke said the commission had so far observed that people rush to do the pre-registration but about half of them have failed to complete their registration. He said all stakeholders must channel same energy asking people to register to also ask people to go to INEC offices to complete their registration. Aware of the present challenge, Agboke said the INEC is making an arrangement that registration begins and ends at the local government centre, not the polling unit or registration area. He added that the commission will not be rotating around registration areas in interest of safety of its gadgets and staff.
While identifying the need for more eligible Nigerians to participate in the ongoing CVR, Jerome-Mario Utomi, the programme coordinator (Media and Policy), Social and Economic Justice Advocacy, stressed that the nation must also find ways of keeping faith with the four basic conditions necessary for holding free and fair elections: an honest, competent and non-partisan body to administer the election; the knowledge and willingness of the political community to accept basic rules and regulations governing the contest; a developed system of political parties and teams of candidates presented to the electorates as alternative choices; and an independent judiciary to interpret electoral laws and settle election disputes.