More Nigerians may vote in this year’s general elections than they did anytime in the last 20 years when the country returned to democratic rule, Daily Trust reports.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) yesterday revealed that 84 million Nigerians have been registered to vote in the general elections starting on February 16. This represents an increase of 27 million over the 57 million that were registered in 1999.

INEC yesterday made available to each political party, a copy of the entire national register of voters in fulfilment of the legal requirement.

The INEC National Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, who performed the task at the regular quarterly meeting with political parties in Abuja, said the final register for the 2019 general elections stood at 84,004,084 voters after the mandatory display of the register in all polling units nationwide for claims and objections from 6th- 12th November 2018.

Card reader sacrosanct, abolished incident form

Professor Yakubu also yesterday re-emphasized the commission’s policy that the Smart Card Readers (SMR) would be used for the 2019 general elections for accreditation to confirm, verify and authenticate the voter.

“The Card Reader shall be used to authenticate the fingerprint of the voter as an additional confirmatory procedure. If the fingerprint is not authenticated by the card reader but the PVC is confirmed as genuine and the voter’s personal details are consistent with the manual register, he/she shall be allowed to vote,” he said.

“However, where the biometric authentication fails, the voter will be required to thumbprint a box next to his/her picture on the register and to enter his/her mobile telephone number before proceeding to vote.

“The Commission has modified the register of voters for the 2019 general elections accordingly. Consequently, the separate Incident Form used in previous elections which is only completed by the Presiding Officer without the involvement of the voter is now abolished.

“Similarly, the claim that the card reader has been enhanced to recapture voters’ fingerprints at polling units and automatically overwrite the biometric record on our database is untrue and should be disregarded,” he added.

But some political parties at the event expressed reservations over the alleged “smuggling” of new rules with regard to the use of incident form, alleging that the commission did not consult them before making changes to the rules.

They also insisted that Mrs. Amina Zakari must be removed as the chairman of the INEC Committee on Collation of presidential results.

Earlier, the INEC chairman who said the commission had printed and delivered the Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) to the states urged all registered voters who had not collected theirs to do so at any local government area office and other designated collection centres nationwide.

Campaign finances/Vote buying

Professor Yakubu also told various political parties that the commission would keep a close watch on their campaign finance. He also assured them that that there was no change in the number of polling units and voting points used for the 2015 general elections and the 2016 Area Council elections in the FCT.

The INEC boss, who added that there was a new method of vote buying being devised despite the mechanism already put in place to stop the menace, said the electoral body would work with security agencies to deal with the violators.

“We have received credible information that some partisan actors are now going round buying up PVCs from voters or financially inducing them to collect the Voter Identification Numbers (VIN) on their PVCs. In some instances, telephone numbers and details of bank accounts of voters have been collected. By collecting the PVCs, their intention may be to deprive the voters of voting since no one can vote without the PVC.

“By collecting their phone numbers and bank details, the intention is to induce voters by electronic transfer of funds to their accounts since it will be difficult to buy votes at polling units. By collecting the VINs, they may be acting on the mistaken notion that our system can be hacked into and the Card Readers somehow preloaded ahead of election and compromised.

“We want to reassure Nigerians that we are aware of the new tricks. It is a futile effort. We will work with the security agencies to deal with the violators of our electoral laws, including those who may be trying to compromise our staff responsible for making the PVCs available for collection by legitimate voters,” he added.

Turnout of voters

Daily Trust investigation showed that despite increased number of prospective voters in 20 years, turn out over the years ranged from 53 per cent in 1999 to nearly 70 per cent in both 2003 and 2007; then down to the same percentage as 1999-that is 53 per cent in 2011 and further down to 43 per cent in 2015.

The official data analysed by Daily Trust showed that 175 million Nigerians had voted in the five presidential elections where 81 candidates contested since the country’s return to democracy in the last 19 years.

Also, the April 2003 where Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was elected for the second term had the highest voter turnout of 69.1 per cent.

The April 1999 presidential election had the highest registered voters of 73, 528, 040, according to the official data. The late Umaru Musa Yar’adua was the president elected with the highest percentage of votes cast of 69.1 per cent since 1999.

This is despite the recorded electoral irregularities which the late president even admitted during his swearing in.

A total of 81 candidates contested for the number- one seat in the presidential polls held between 1999 and 2015, where Obasanjo, Yar’adua, Goodluck Jonathan, and Buhari were elected as presidents.

No matter the number of candidates, it had always been a two-way race in all the elections. From 1999 to date, the candidates that mattered had been the first two.

Only two candidates contested in the 1999 elections, 20 vied in 2003 polls, but the number rose to 25 in 2007, and down to 20 in 2011, and 14 in 2015, according to the official data.

Buhari is leading the league of serial presidential candidates, having contested four times only to course to victory in 2015. Obasanjo contested twice and won, late Yar’adua contested once and won, and Jonathan contested twice and won once.

How geopolitical zones voted

In 1999 polls, the south south had the highest valid votes of 4,227,330, followed by northwest 3,884,836, north central 3,615,793, northeast 3,552,353, southeast 2,307,772, and southwest 1,902,196.

In 2003 elections, the northwest led with 9,643,772 valid votes, followed by south-south 7,673,448, northeast 6,237,877, north central 5,739,206, southwest 5,698,907, and southeast 4,550,279.

During 2007 elections, the northwest had the highest valid votes cast totalling 8,867,128; trailed by south-south 6,770,546, north central 6,494,860, southwest 4,349,730, southeast 3,673,274, and northeast 3,114,413.

In 2011, the northwest led other zones with the highest valid votes of 6,844,836, south-south 6,197,404, north central 5,052,348, southeast 5,044,923, southwest 4,553,999, and northeast 4,814,167.

In 2015, the northwest had the highest valid votes of 8,505,577, with south-south following with 4,667,879, southwest 4,362,456, north central 4,149,143, northeast 3,672,348, and southeast 2,719,654.

Composition of N/Assembly since 1999

In 1999 when the 4th National Assembly was to be ushered in, only three political parties took part in the elections to fill the 109 Senate and 360 House of Representatives seats.

The political parties were the PDP the defunct APDP and the Alliance for Democracy (AD).

In the elections conducted on February 20, 1999, the PDP got 59 Senate seats, APP got 29, while AD won 20 seats, with one vacant seat. A total of 24,386,247 votes were cast during that year’s Senate election. As for the House of Reps, ‎PDP got 206 seats, APP had 78, AD got 68, while there were 12 vacant seats. A total of 23,573,407 votes were cast.

In 2003, the figures changed, but the same political parties produced the lawmakers in both chambers as PDP got 76 Senate seats, the defunct ANPP got 27, while AD had 6, with 29,995,171 as total votes cast.

The PDP also got 223 House of Reps seats during that election, ANPP, 96; AD, 34; United Nigerian Peoples Party (UNPP), 2; All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), 2; National Democratic Party (NDP), 1; Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), 1, and 1 vacant seat. A total of 30,386,270 votes were recorded.

The 2003 National Assembly elections were held on April 12, 2003. The 2007 recorded additional political parties that got Senate seats, but the PDP maintained its majority status.

The breakdown of the composition showed that PDP had 85 seats, ANPP, 16; Action for Change (AC), 6; Progressives Peoples Alliance (PPA), 1, and Accord Party 1.

In the House of Reps, PDP recorded 262, ANPP, 62; AC, 32; PPA, 3 and Labour Party (P), 1.

As for the 2011 National Assembly elections ‎held on April 9, that year, PDP had 71 Senate seats; the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), 18; ANPP, 7; Congress for Progressives Change (CPC), 7; LP, 4, while APGA and the Democratic Peoples Party (DPP) had1 each.

In the House, PDP got 203; ACN, 69; CPC, 38; ANPP, 28; LP, 8, APGA, 7; Accord, 5, DPP and Peoples Party of Nigeria (PPN) got one each. A total of 28,552,140 votes were cast.

However, the table turned during the 2015 National Assembly elections when the All Progressives Congress (APC), a merger of four different political parties won the majority seats in both chambers.

APC got 60 seats, while PDP got 49 seats during the polls. However, one APC senator-elect, Ahmed ‎Zannah, passed on before the inauguration of the 8th Senate. Our correspondents reports that some senators had since changed political parties, leading to the emergence of parties such as the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and APGA having senators. Also, as at the time the 2015 elections results were announced, APC got 225 seats, PDP, 125, APGA got 3, LP 4, while Accord had 3. However, that composition had since changed following series of defections by the lawmakers across political parties.

https://www.dailytrust.com.ng/voter-register-rose-by-50-in-20-years.html