Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, says the 2023 general elections will be dominated by young people in Nigeria.
Yakubu stated this while giving a breakdown of voter registration and collection of Permanent Voter Cards in Nigeria during his address at Chatham House, London, on Tuesday.
He said available records showed that the election would be dominated by Nigerian youths.
The INEC chairman, who expressed delight at the turn-out of registered voters to collect their PVCs, disclosed that over 600,000 eligible voters collected their PVCs in Lagos alone in the last one month.
Yakubu stated that there are currently 93.4 million registered voters in Nigeria, out of which 37 million (39 per cent) are young people between the ages of 18 and 34.
He added, “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.
“So, out of the 93.4 million, 70.4 million registered voters are between the ages of 18 and 49.”
Yakubu stressed that the collection of the PVCs will end on January 29.
“We have to end it because before the election we will publish number of PVCs collected on polling unit by polling unit basis nationwide,” he further said.