Rivers state has recorded a massive surge in its number of registered voters, overtaking Katsina state on the list of eligible voters for the 2023 presidential election, a report by Independent National Electoral Commission has revealed.
According to the report, Rivers state has a total of 3,689,197 registered voters to emerge as the fourth state with the largest number of voters ahead of Katsina, a northwest state with a voting population that had been among the highest in the country since 1999.
The New Diplomat reports that in 2019, Rivers State had 3.21 million registered voters, however with the suspension of the Continuous Voters Registration (CVR) exercise the state has added 473,924 registered voters in the CVR and that brought its total registered voters to 3.68 million.
On the other hand, Katsina currently has 3,570,740 registered voters.
Further breakdown of the report indicates that the Northwest region tops the list of eligible voters for the 2023 presidential election.
According to the commission, the Northwest region which is made up of seven states: Sokoto, Kano, Kebbi, Katsina, Zamfara, Kaduna and Jigawa, has 22,672,373 prospective voters.
On the list, the Southwest region comes second with 18,332,191 voters. The zone is made of the six states of Lagos, Oyo, Ondo, Osun and Ekiti. Northcentral is third with 15,680,438, followed by Southsouth with 15,299,374; Northeast, 12,820,363 and Southeast, 11,498,277.
The commission further disclosed that a total of 96,303,016 eligible voters have registered to vote in next year’s general election.
A state-by-state breakdown of the new registration figure shows that Lagos maintained its position as the state with the highest number of registered voters, increasing its figure from 6.5 million to 7.1 million. Kano State also maintained its second position, adding 569,103 new voters to increase its number to 6.02 million.
Kaduna State now has 4.4 million registered voters, Rivers: 3.68 million voters and Katsina comes fifth with 3.57 million.
Some other states with a sizeable number of registered voters are Delta (3.3 million) and Oyo (3.3 million) Also, Ekiti retained its position as the state with the lowest number of registered voters despite rising from 909, 967 registered voters to 1, 034, 911.
Youths form the major component of the new would-be voters. There are 8,784,677 of them.
Further analysis shows that there is a surge in the number of registered voters. The electoral body registered 84,004,084 voters for the 2019 polls. Thus, there are new 12,298,932 registered voters.
INEC had shut its registration portal on Sunday, thus bringing the exercise to a halt for now.
A notice on the website yesterday read: “The CVR exercise has been suspended. Access to log-in to check the status of your completed applications will soon be restored.”
The deadline for the exercise was first fixed for June 30 before it was moved to July 31.
The New Diplomat reports that a total of eighteen political parties will participate in the forthcoming general election.
Among them are Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC); Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP); Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP).
