2023 elections belong to the youth – INEC Boss

The chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, has said that the 2023 general election is an election for the young people in Nigeria.

Giving a breakdown of voter registration and collection of Permanent Voter Cards in Nigeria at his address at Chatham House, London, Tuesday afternoon, Yakubu said records on the ground showed that the election would be dominated by the Nigerian youth.

Yakubu, who said he was encouraged by the turn-out of registered voters to collect their PVCs, said over 600,000 eligible voters collected their PVCs in Lagos alone within the last one month.

The INEC boss stated that there are currently 93.4 million registered voters in Nigeria out of which 37 million, that is 39 per cent, are young people between the ages of 18 and 34.

“And then they’re closely followed by 33.4 million or 35.3 per cent middle-age voters between the ages of 35 and 49.

“Put together, these two categories constitute 75.39 per cent of registered voters in Nigeria. So, actually the 2023 election is the election of the young people, because they have the numbers. Even the majority of the PVCs collected are collected by young people,” Yakubu added.

“So, out of the 93.4 million, 70.4 million registered voters are between the ages of 18 and 49,” Yakubu stated.

He reminded the audience that the collection of the PVCs would end on January 29, adding that “we have to end it because before the election we will publish number of PVCs collected on polling unit by polling unit basis nationwide.”