Lagos Now Has About 7m Registered Voters – INEC

Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said there are about seven million registered voters in Lagos State, Southwest Nigeria.

Gatekeepers News reports that the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Olusegun Agbaje, however, explained that many have not completed their registration.

Agbaje disclosed this in an interview with NAN over the weekend.

According the him, the numbers of voters will amount to around seven million, if the number of new registrants in the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) is added to the current number of registered voters in the state.

Agbaje said, “In Lagos state, as of Monday (July 18), those who registered online are 640,560 but many of them have not completed registration. Those who have completed the registration exercise are 451,156.

“Everybody cannot be captured but those who come to us will be registered.”

“The total number of registered voters in Lagos state before the commencement of the ongoing CVR is 6,570,291, and if we add the new registrants, we have about seven million registered voters.”

Agbaje noted that as the July 31 deadline fixed by INEC approaches, those who present themselves for registration would not be denied.

“Every day, there is no one that will come here that will go out without being attended to, unless we cannot finish before 7pm, because by that time, all over the country, the system will shut down to avoid misuse of the machines at night,” he added.

He explained that the commission had to stop the CVR on July 31 in order to clean up the voter register which he described as vital to the credibility of elections.

Agbaje, therefore, urged people to avoid double registration, adding that those engaged in double or multiple registrations would not get PVCs.

He added that the PVCs for persons who registered between January and July will be ready by October, while distribution will take place from October to December.

According to him, “About 10,000 have collected their PVCs out of 34,000 new ones. As people are collecting the new ones, they are also collecting the old ones.”

He further urged the people to visit INEC offices in each of the 20 LGAs for collection of their PVCs.