With less than two weeks to the deadline set by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for Continuous Voter Registration (CVR), there is a rush by prospective voters to get their Permanent Voter Card (PVC) ahead of the 2023 general election.
Presidential and National Assembly polls are scheduled by INEC for February 25, 2023, while the governorship and state assembly polls will hold on March 11. Under the CVR programme, the commission shut down its online pre-registration portal on May 30, this year, and has fixed June 30 as the deadline for physical registration of the biometrics of intending voters. But the electoral body itself has acknowledged a huge surge in the number of citizens seeking to register. “(INEC) has received reports from states indicating an unprecedented surge in the number of citizens that wish to register as voters and the challenges they face across the country. In some states, the sudden turnout of prospective registrants is overwhelming,” a recent statement by the commission’s spokesman and National Commissioner in charge of Information and Voter Education, Festus Okoye, said. “In response, the commission has immediately released additional 209 machines deployed mainly to the five Southeastern states, Lagos and Kano, where the pressure is most acute. The commission will monitor the situation over the next few days. Thereafter, it will meet to review the progress of the exercise,” the statement also said, adding: “Every step will be taken and all options will be explored to ensure that eligible Nigerians are given the opportunity to register as voters.”
About the same time Okoye’s statement was issued, INEC Chairman Professor Mahmood Yakubu personally gave an assurance that the electoral body would do all it can to allow intending and eligible persons to register as voters. In a tweet on the commission’s official handle, he said: “We have heard your requests loud and clear. You will soon hear from us on the extension of CVR registration. Please assure me that you will register, pick your PVCs and vote. I also assure you that your vote will count.” His comment came against the backdrop of calls from several quarters on the electoral body to shift the CVR deadline beyond June 30. Amidst speculations that the commission had conclusively extended the deadline, however, the commission last week clarified that the deadline subsists but rather that intervention measures were taken to ease the pressure.
INEC’s hesitation over extending the voter registration deadline is understandable, considering that there’s a pervasive syndrome whereby Nigerians leave things till the last minute before doing what could have been done long before a stipulated deadline. The electoral body rolled out the CVR programme since June 2021, and the current pressure was avoidable if eligible registrants had engaged the process early. But there have as well been hiccups in the commission’s processes that partly account for the present rush against deadline. Civil society coalition on elections, Situation Room, in its recent call on the commission to extend the deadline highlighted the hiccups to include failure of personnel in many INEC offices to work with data entered by intending registrants on the online pre-registration portal, “leading to people being treated as walk-in registrants and (being) asked to queue to supply the same details already provided online.” Situation Room added that it received “several complaints of inadequate manpower and equipment in INEC offices, thus making it difficult to have a seamless registration process (which) has led to delays and restiveness of citizens waiting to register in long queues.”
Whether the rush for PVC will translate to high voter turnout in 2023 remains to be seen. But the sheer surge is by itself positive as it signposts higher alertness to civic responsibility in the citizenry, and INEC has noted it is an affirmation of growing confidence Nigerians have in the electoral process. Since Section 9(6) of the Electoral (Amendment) Act 2022 allows for voter registration and updating of the register to subsist till 90 days before the general election, and since INEC only recently accommodated political parties by shifting the deadline for submission of their candidates’ particulars, there’s no reason it cannot accommodate prospective voters by extending the CVR deadline.