INEC confirms 68.83m voters for February’s elections

THE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), says it has registered 68,833,476 voters for next month’s general elections.

 INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, announced this at a news conference and presentation of voter registers to leadership of political parties.

Jega said the commission arrived at the figure after removing over four million voters that engaged in duplicate registration from the 73.5 million registrants nationwide.

He said that the removal was done through the commission’s AFIX and Business Rules for the printing of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).

AFIX is software that allows the commission to identify and exclude any double registration from its data base.

He disclosed that the figure would be made available to the public on the commission’s website in the next couple of days.

Jega added that the commission was ready to provide evidence to any political parties in doubt about the figure and the process used in the computation of the register.

He also said 14 candidates were duly nominated by political parties for the  presidential election holding on February 14.

“For senatorial elections, there are 739 candidates; and for the House of Representatives elections, there are 1,780 candidates.’’

The chairman also disclosed that the commission had received all funds required to conduct the general elections from government.

He said the commission had taken delivery of additional PVCs from the contractor, “and we are positive that the commission will have outstanding cards with us latest Jan. 28.’’

Jega said INEC would use card readers for the 2015 elections as it had commenced the deployment of the received readers to states.

“The commission has received more than 132,000 units of these card readers.’’