Insinuations that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) prevented over seven million Nigerians from completing their online pre-registration during the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) in advance of the 2023 general elections have been refuted.
The electoral body characterized the assertions as false and deceptive, adding persons in that group should take responsibility for failing to take the appropriate action when it was necessary.
In a statement released on Monday in Abuja by Barr Festus Okoye, National Commissioner of INEC and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, he said Nigerians had the option to start the registration process online and then schedule a time to complete the physical biometric capture at designated centers.
He noted that the commission had implemented online voter pre-registration on June 28, 2021.
Okoye said, “It was a novel idea leveraging technology to ease the registration process. This was in addition to the walk-in option at physical centres, where Nigerians can commence and complete their registration simultaneously without going through the online pre-registration procedure.”
He said that the Commission offered weekly data updates on the exercise in the interest of transparency.
10,487,972 people, he claimed, started the online pre-registration procedure.
He urged Nigerians to always follow deadlines rather than persistently calling for deadline extensions at the very last minute.
But according to the commission, by the exercise’s deadline, 3,444,378 Nigerians have physically finished their pre-registration at the designated centers in accordance with the commission’s guidelines.
He continued, “Some 7,043,594 applicants did not complete the registration. Again, the Commission made the information public. This is what some people are now using to say that they were denied the opportunity when in reality they failed to either complete the online enrolment or appear physically at the designated centres to complete the process.
“A breakdown of the 7,043,594 incomplete online pre-registrations is as follows: 4,161,775 citizens attempted but either did not complete online pre-registration or abandoned it and went for the physical registration instead.
“2,881,819 registrants completed the online pre-registration but did not show up to complete the physical Biometric Capture at designated centres before the deadline.”
He claimed that it is obvious that no Nigerians were purposefully denied the chance to finish their online pre-registration.