Ahead of the February 23 presidential and National Assembly elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said that over 72 million Nigerians collected their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).
INEC chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, who announced the figure during a press briefing in Abuja, on Thursday, said exactly 72,775,585 Nigerians collected their PVCs, a figure which he said represents 86.3 per cent of the over 84 million Nigerian registered voters.
Earlier before now, INEC had released the total number of Nigerian registered voters standing at 84,004,084, representing 42 per cent of Nigeria’s 198 million population.
From the total 84,004,084, representing the total number of voters out of 72,775,585 collected their PVCs, Prof Yakubu said 11.2 million cards remained uncollected.
With the figures released, showing 72.7 million PVCs collected, it means the likely voters in 2019 elections are 16,344,330 more compared with the 56,431,255 PVCs collected in 2015.
Comparing the 2015 and 2019 figures, this shows an increase of 22 per cent in the number of PVCs collected by the electorate.
and then