INEC plans online voter registration, 16 million Nigerians targeted

In an effort to tackle the large voter registration process at several centres in Nigeria before the 2023 general elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has disclosed that part of the registration exercise will be carried out online while biometric data capturing would occur at specified centres.

The new initiative taken by INEC is likely to lessen congestion at the registration centres.

The INEC National Commissioner, Information and Voter Education, Mr Festus Okoye, declared this during a conversation with Top Naija on Monday, while responding to questions on the process for voter registration.

The INEC National Commissioner and Chairman of Information and Voter Education Committee, Mr Festus Okoye

He said, “We won’t require everyone to go to registration centres to go register. The new registrants will start their registration online and only go to the registration centres for the purpose of capturing fingerprints and faces. So, that lessens the period that people will spend at registration centres.

“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.”

The Independent National Electoral Commission had in November 2020, assured that the continuous voter registration, which had been suspended since August 2018, would begin within the first quarter of 2021. INEC has not registered any Nigerian over the last 30 months.

Meanwhile, with the first quarter of 2021 ending, the registration exercise has not commenced, implying that INEC may not begin registration soon.

Responding, nevertheless, the INEC commissioner stated that the delay was mainly caused by the discussions in creating new polling units.

Okoye further said that 119,973 polling units in Nigeria set up in 1996 had become completely insufficient, therefore establishing over 57,000 voting points in the last elections. He stated that there was a need to change several voting points to full polling units to facilitate the voting process.

The INEC commissioner, added that as soon as this was done, the continuous voter registration would be able to begin.

He said, “What we have done as a commission is to prioritise some of the cogent issues that we need to address. What we have decided is that expansion of access to polling units is very urgent and will fundamentally affect the issue of continuous voter registration.”

When inquired as to whether INEC would have adequate time to register new persons and tackle other related matters, Okoye declared that a new enrolment device would be established which would smoothen the process.

He stated that the number of voters will likely increase from 84 million to 100 million.

Okoye said, “With the new enrolment device, we want to deploy and the number of people, we can conclude this process within a period of one year. I can’t see what will take us more than a year to register less than 20 million voters.”