INEC Plans Online Voter Registration, Targets 16 Million Nigerians

Posted by African Examiner Featured, Latest Headlines, News Across Nigeria Tuesday, March 23rd, 2021

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – In a bid to address the cumbersome process of voter registration at the various centers in Nigeria ahead of the 2023 general elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission, has said part of the registration exercise will be done online while biometric data capturing would take place at designated centers

The new initiative is expected to reduce overcrowding at the registration centers

The INEC National Commissioner, Information and Voter Education, Mr. Festus Okoye, said this during a chat on Monday, while reacting to questions on the modalities for voter registration

“It is only those who cannot do the online registration or don’t have the capacity to do so, that will go to the polling unit to complete the entire process but for those who are Internet savvy and have computers will start registration online and go to the registration centres for their fingerprint and face capturing”

INEC had in November 2020, promised that the continuous voter registration, which had been suspended since August 2018, would commence within the first quarter of 2021. INEC has not registered any Nigerian in the last 30 months

However, with the first quarter of 2021 coming to an end, the registration exercise has yet to begin, meaning that INEC may not commence registration soon

Reacting, however, Okoye said the delay was largely caused by the consultations over the creation of new polling units

The INEC commissioner noted that Nigeria’s 119,973 polling units established in 1996 had become grossly inadequate hence the creation of over 57,000 voting points in the last elections. He noted that there was a need to convert some of the voting points to full polling units to ease the process of voting (Culled From Punch)