Bayelsa, Ebonyi and Rivers top the list of states with the highest number of invalid registered voters as Nigeria’s voter population increased by 9,518,188.
According to the data released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Wednesday, a total of 2,780,756 were consequently delisted from 12,298,944 new voters who completed the Continuous Voters Registration (CVR) exercise.
The exercise which was conducted nationwide commenced in June 2021 and ended in July 2022 despite kicks from some Nigerians and civil groups which canvassed its extension.
While the voter registration was free, PREMIUM TIMES uncovered how some corrupt officials had been taking advantage of the rush by Nigerians to beat the deadline for the exercise, among other anomalies.
Some of these anomalies include inadequate capturing machines, late resumption of INEC officials and sheer dereliction of duties.
These loopholes were to a large extent explored by corrupt officials and adversely added to the 22.6 percentage margin of invalid registrants recorded across the country.
Bayelsa leads
Of the 444,652 new registrants that completed their CVR exercise in Bayelsa State in the South-south region, 307,513 of the number were declared invalid.
This means 69.2 per cent of the people that participated in the exercise committed one of the infractions frowned upon by the electoral body.
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Ebonyi State took the second spot as only 161,447 registrants satisfactorily scaled INEC’s Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) data cleaning exercise out of the 401,510 registrants who completed the registration.
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Not less than 59.8 of the total new registrants were delisted in the South-east state.
Despite recording one of the highest numbers of newly registered voters, Rivers parted with 33 per cent of its total CVR registered voters after the INEC data cleaning phase.
Out of the 473,924 newly-registered voters, 317,717 were declared valid on the commission’s data table seen by PREMIUM TIMES.
Anambra also lost 30.6 per cent of its registered voters to a data cleaning exercise.
Out of the 313,471 successfully registered voters during the CVR exercise in the state, a total of 95,835 were not valid.
Except for Imo State where only 40,732 (19.1 per cent) of the 213,270 total new registered voters were delisted, no other state in South-east or South-south recorded lower than 20 per cent of their total registrants declared invalid.
Of the 365,940 new voters in Edo, 172,538 were valid.
Only 23.9, 27.8 and 29.4 per cent of the total 322,351, 327,711, and 523,517 new registrants were delisted in Cross River, Akwa-Ibom and Delta.
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The valid new voters in Abia were 196,683 while 72,657 have been declared invalid. At least 61,261 of the 243,565 total registered voters in Enugu were also invalid according to INEC data.
States with lowest invalid registrants
States like Zamfara, Kwara, Abuja, Plateau and Kaduna, all in the Nnorthern part of the country, recorded the lowest percentage of invalid registration.
Of the 238,649 registrants in Zamfara, only 11.2 per cent were invalid.
A total of 330,401 new registrants were recorded in Kwara out of which 43,008 (13.0%) were delisted.
Not less than 27,589 (13.1%) and 47,797 (13.3%) voters were also removed from the total of 211,341 and 359,639 recorded at the end of CVR in Abuja and Plateau respectively.
Kaduna parted with 13.8 per cent of its 479,231 total new registrants after the data cleaning.
Of the 585,629 and 569,103 total new voters in Lagos and Kano respectively, only 80,728 and 99,285 were declared invalid in both states.
Bola Tinubu of the ruling APC served as a two-term governor and senator of Lagos, his counterpart in the New Nigeria People’s Party, Rabiu Kwankwaso, has achieved similar feats in Kano.
Both candidates may have an edge over other presidential candidates in the coming presidential election.