Rivers Records Highest Voters Registration

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says Rivers State has so far recorded the highest number of registered voters in the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration between April and September 2017.
Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, who stated this last Wednesday while speaking to journalists also revealed that Rivers State recorded about 151, 398 newly registered voters while Lagos State came second with 144, 076 and Ondo State recorded the lowest number with 29, 766.
Yakubu while giving a breakdown of the Continuous Voter Registration conducted between April and September 2017, said about 667, 103 persons registered to vote in the South-South geopolitical zone.
According to him, the zone comprises Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta and Edo states.
“The South-West came  second with 532,172 persons registered to vote while the North-West, which has seven states, had a combined 477, 056 registered voters’’, he said.
The Chairman also informed that the North-Central came in fourth with 374, 923 while the South-East which has five states recorded 352,942 voters, adding that in the North-East, 350,398 registered within the same period.
‘’ In total, about 2, 786, 405 persons registered to vote between  April and September. However, only 108, 752 had come forward to claim their cards’’, he said.
Yakubu further disclosed that about eight million voter cards remain unclaimed, lamenting that out of the eight million PVCs were unclaimed nationwide, Lagos accounted for about one million.
He also said: “Lagos State still remain one state that  has recorded the least collection of PVCs not in terms of numbers but in relation to the numbers that registered, stating that out of the eight plus million PVCs still uncollected nationwide, over a million are uncollected in Lagos.”
The INEC boss said the voter apathy in Lagos was worrisome as various strategies employed by INEC seemed not to be working.
He said the last two by-elections in Lagos had recorded very low turnout