INEC confirms 2.5m registered voters in Anambra

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it has registered a total of 2,525,471 voters for the 6 November governorship elections in Anambra State.

The INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, announced this at an emergency meeting with the 18 recognised political parties in Abuja on Friday.

Mr Yakubu said the commission arrived at the new figure after removing 62,698 persons from the total of 138,802 new registrants recorded at the end of the first quarter of the Continuous Voters Registration (CVR) exercise on 5 September.

The removed figures were for those spotted by the system for duplicate registration.

While the number of the new eligible CVR registrants stands at 77,475, Anambra State, as at the 2019 General Election accounted for 2,447,996 registered voters.

“In Anambra State, a total of 138,802 citizens completed the registration, including applications for transfer and requests for replacement of lost, damaged or defaced PVCs as required by law,” Mr Yakubu said.

“However, in the process of cleaning up the registration data, we discovered that many previously registered persons re-registered afresh.

“As a testimony to the effectiveness of our new system for checking double and multiple registrations, the Commission found out that some 62,698 persons who are already registered voters in Anambra State went ahead to register again. These double or multiple registrations are invalid by law.

“We have archived these registrations and will not print new PVCs for them. Their old PVCs remain valid and they can use them to vote at the Polling Units where they registered and probably voted in previous elections. The same cleaning up exercise is going on nationwide.

“As soon as it is over, the Commission will provide further details to Nigerians on the situation in other states of the federation and action to be taken on the matter,” the INEC chairman told political parties in attendance.”

He expressed concerns over the growing state of insecurity in Anambra, the safety of its personnel and facilities which bare the mark of recent arsonist attacks.

Mr Yakubu cautioned political parties against utterances and actions that could worsen the insecurity in the state and thereby “make the work of the Commission, political parties and security agencies even more difficult. It may also lead to voter apathy.”

Ozigbo, Soludo, Uba on INEC final list

Before Friday’s meeting with parties, the INEC had on Thursday released the final list of candidates who will fly the flags of their respective parties.

After months of turbulent legal and leadership tussles within the three dominant parties in the state, their candidates were cleared by the Commission to participate in the governorship poll.

A former CBN governor, Charles Soludo, was listed as the candidate of the ruling party in the state, All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), while Valentine Ozigbo and Andy Uba were listed as the candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC).

The commissioner also listed a serving senator and business mogul, Ifeanyi Ubah, as the flag bearer of the Young Progressive Congress (YPP).

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