Insight Nearly 90m Nigerians to vote in make-or-mar election

Out of 93.47 million registered voters for the 2023 general election, 87.21 million have collected their Permanent Voters Card (PVCs). This was disclosed in the data released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Thursday evening.

The number of PVCs collected ahead of February 25 and March 11 elections shows a 93.3 percent collection rate. This is an increase over the 2015 and 2019 rates.

While Laz Apir, an election and advocacy expert, believes that the increase in PVC collection rate will spike voter turnout in Saturday’s election -something INEC is also hopeful about – the increase in the PVC collection rate in 2019 over 2015 didn’t necessarily lead to a higher voter turnout, as data show.

A breakdown of the 87.21 million collected PVCs by states put Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Rivers, and Katsina states ahead of others. This is not unexpected, as these states have the country’s highest number of registered voters.

On the other hand, Bauchi, Anambra, and Katsina recorded the highest collection rate (i.e., a percentage of the number collected as a percentage of the total registered). They recorded at least a 98 percent collection rate. Osun, Oyo, and Ogun states, all in the South-West, have the lowest collection rate — less than 85 percent.

In 2019, Katsina, Taraba, Gombe, Kebbi, and Bauchi were the states with the highest collection rate while Ogun, Ekiti, Oyo, Imo, and Osun had the lowest. 

This trend shows a low PVC collection rate with most of the states in the South-West region.

On uncollected PVCs, according to the data from INEC, 6.26 million cards were not collected in this year’s election, with Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Edo, and Osun States leading the pack. These five states account for 40 percent of the total 6.26 million uncollected PVCs.

By region, the South-West has the highest number of uncollected PVCs, followed by the South-South. Both regions account for 57.17 percent of the total uncollected PVCs.

The South-East and North-East region, on the hand, have the lowest number of uncollected PVCs. In 2019, both regions also had the lowest number of uncollected PVCs — the only difference was that the South-East region had a higher number of uncollected PVCs then.

The South-West also accounted for the highest number of PVCs in 2019, followed by North-West and North-Central. This time, it is slightly different. The South-South, which had the third lowest number of uncollected PVCs in 2019, now ranks second.

Crucial election

Nigerians will go to the polls on Saturday (today) to elect their president and National Assembly members in a make-or-mar election that will define the country’s trajectory.

The election is crucial to many citizens who are eager to have a new government that will solve critical problems of insecurity, economic slump, oil theft, corruption and other major challenges.

According to Frank Umeh of the Nigeria Voters Forum, whoever emerges among Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress, Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party and Peter Obi of Labour Party must ignite the hopes of the people and provide a direction, which the country lacks.

“Again, the next president must show Nigerians that he is ready to work. He must be sympathetic and empathetic, and show Nigerians a different kind of leadership from what has happened here in recent times, ” he said.