All things being equal, Nigerians are expected to exercise their franchise on February 25 and March 11 to elect candidates of their choice for exalted seats of president, federal lawmakers in the parliament, state governors and legislators into state assemblies.
The electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), saddled statutorily with the conduct of the election, has since assured that it was on top of logistics for the exercise.
Chairman of the commission, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, said the embarrassing occurrence of 2019 in which the general election was postponed by one week on the eve of the presidential and National Assembly election would not repeat itself four years after.
Logistics as aberration
Last December, INEC signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the leadership of Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO), the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN) to facilitate efficient and successful logistics delivery for the elections.
Professor Yakubu disclosed at the event that the commission would require 100,000 vehicles and about 4,200 boats for the general election.
“The signing of a revised MoU with the road and marine transport unions today is a demonstration of our determination to implement key recommendations of the review exercise to enhance forward and reverse logistics in our electoral operations.
“The 2023 general election will involve the nationwide deployment of over one million personnel and massive quantities of materials twice within a period of two weeks from our state offices to 774 local government areas; 8,809 electoral wards and 176,846 polling units across the length and breadth of our country. It will require over 100,000 vehicles and about 4,200 boats that will be accompanied by naval gunboats,” the INEC chairman had said.
He further assured prospective voters that his personnel and materials for the elections would get to polling units ahead of voters on days of the elections.
To test the integrity of the Bimodal Voters Accreditation (BVAS) machine, the commission conducted mock accreditation of voters in designated 436 polling units across the country earlier this month.
The BVAS is a technological device used to identify and accredit voters’ fingerprints and facial recognition before voting. The device is also used for capturing images of the polling unit result sheet (Form EC8A) and uploading the image of the result sheet online.
Speaking with newsmen after visiting some of the designated PUs in Abuja, Professor Yakubu said the mock accreditation was conducted to allay fears of Nigerians, particularly those who have expressed reservations about the efficiency and effectiveness of the technological device, which he noted was meant to promote transparency and credibility of the electoral process.
“Essentially, what we intend to achieve is to further test the integrity of the machines that we are going to deploy on election day.
“We are satisfied with the tests carried out in our office, but we needed to test the machines in the field ahead of the elections.
“Bearing in mind that this is the first time we deployed the machines nationwide, so we have identified 436 polling units nationwide on the equality of tests of the federation, based on two local governments per senatorial district, and four polling units by local government making a total of 16 polling units per state, based on which we have deployed the machines.”
He further disclosed that in the event of malfunctioning of any of the BVAS machines on the days of the elections, the commission has made provision for contingency.
“In the two polling units that have been visited so far, there is no report of failure. The machines have performed optimally.
“And this is the report we’re getting so far nationwide, but we have also made contingency arrangements like we will do on Election Day, that there is a spare machine in case and in the unlikely event of a malfunction.
“We will be able to respond and fix the machines. But so far, so good. No incident, no failure, and we’re hoping and praying. Having worked very hard on February 25th and March 11th, the machines will also perform optimally.”
What is the total number of Voters?
At a session last January with leadership of the 18 political parties held at the commission’s headquarters, the Chairman of INEC gave a figure of 93,469,008 voters for the general election.
The breakdown revealed that Lagos State has 7,060,195 registered voters to top the list followed by Kano with 5,921,370, Kaduna and Rivers State with 4,335,208 and 3,537,190, respectively. Ekiti has the least number of voters with 502,251.
Further breakdown showed that the North-West zone has the highest number of registered voters with 22,255,562 followed by South-West with 17,958,966 voters.
A breakdown of the number of eligible voters indicates that men constitute 52.5 per cent, while women make up 47.5 per cent of the total figure.
Giving further clarification on how his commission arrived at the figure, the INEC Chairman disclosed that following the Continuous Voters Registration exercise, a total of 9,518,188 was added to the existing 84,004,084 2019 voters population. A total of 53,264 were removed following claims and objections to arrive at the current voters population
He said: “You would recall that for the 2019 general election, Nigeria had a voter population of 84,004,084. After the cleaning up of the data from the last Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise (June 2021 – July 2022), 9,518,188 new voters were added to the previous register resulting in the preliminary register of 93,522,272 which was presented to Nigerians for claims and objections as required by law.
“At the end of the period for claims and objections by citizens, the commission received 53,264 objections from Nigerians to the prevalence of ineligible persons on the register by virtue of age, citizenship or death. These names have been verified and removed from the register.”
Checks revealed that volumes of Permanent Voter Cards remained uncollected at the end of the deadline for their collection given by the electoral umpire.
Political parties and certain civil society organisations have continued to demand from the commission to give Nigerians the total number of uncollected PVCs by prospective voters.
Asked by Sunday Tribune on when the commission would give Nigerians the total estimate of the idle PVCs, Mr Festus Okoye said it would be done by the chairman of the commission.
He said: “All validly-registered voters have collected their Permanent Voter Cards and the commission has requested all the Resident Electoral Commissioners to harvest the figures of collected and uncollected PVCs.
“The commission will publish the total PVCs collected and deposit the uncollected ones in the Central Bank. They will be released at the conclusion of elections and resumption of the Continuous Voter Registration.”
