With just 24 hours until the 2023 Elections decision day, when Nigerians will march to the ballot to elect the next president and members of the National Assembly, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said yesterday that a total of 87,209,007 out of 93.4 million registered citizens are eligible to vote base on the number of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) collected.
This represents approximately 93.3% of all registered voters in the country, with approximately 6.2 million registered voters not getting their PVC.
INEC’s president, Professor Mahmoud Yakub, presented the figures at a daily briefing at the National Collection Center in Abuja. He said about 13.6 million new PVCs had been printed. This was done for anyone newly registering or applying for a transfer of PVC or for anyone requesting a replacement.
Lagos State leads the way with its PVC collection of 6,214,970 pieces. Kano is second with about 5,594,193 collected PVCs. Kaduna is a close third with 4,164,473, followed by Katsina at 3,459,945. Rivers ranks fifth with 3,285,785 PVCs collected as of February 5, 2023. Ekiti recorded the fewest number of collected PVCs with 958,052.
States with the highest number of uncollected PVC include Lagos – 845,225, Oyo – 515,254 and Ogun – 410,281.
With a total of 2,749,268 registered voters, Bauchi has the highest PVC collection rate of 99%, equivalent to 2,721,780 PVC collected.
Yakub assured the Nigerian people that the commission was well prepared for the 2023 elections. in his words,
“we remain fully committed to a free, fair and credible process. I want to once again declare that our allegiance is only to Nigeria. Our commitment is to ensure that in this election, we put everything in place for free choice, fair and credible outcome”.
