In response to appeals from citizens, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC has extended the Continuous Voter Registration, CVR, exercise for three more days.
The exercise will now end on Sunday, 20th July 2025.
After the INEC concluded the CVR, which started on the 8th of July and ended on the 17th of July, voices from various quarters, including Ohaneze Ndigbo Worldwide and other stakeholders, had described the process as a total failure, owing to its inability to meet the demands of the teeming population that trooped out for the exercise
This was so, because across the state, there were challenges of inadequate registration points, personnel and equipment, as well as poor bandwidth for the data-capturing machines to work.
There were also reports of INEC workers collecting bribes from registrants to be able to register them, due to the large number of people in the queue.
In a statement issued Thursday night by its National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, Sam Olumekun, INEC revealed that as of July 16, a total of 96,085 new voters had been successfully registered within nine days, averaging over 10,600 registrations per day.
He noted that 12,595 voters applied for transfer of their registration both within and outside the State, while 7,061 persons applied for the update of their records or the replacement of their damaged or lost Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs).
Olumekun also disclosed that it has received five additional letters of intent from groups aspiring to register as political parties.
INEC stated, “The Commission held its regular weekly meeting on the 17th July 2025. Among other issues, the meeting reviewed the ongoing preparation for the forthcoming off-cycle governorship election in Anambra State and further update on applications for registration by new political parties.
“The Commission is pleased with the turnout of registrants in Anambra State and the peaceful conduct of the CVR in all the 326 registration centres in the State.
“In response to appeals from citizens, the Commission hereby extends the exercise for three more days. It will now end on Sunday, 20th July 2025.”
The statement added, “Thereafter, the Commission will display the register for claims and objections by citizens as provided by law, followed by a further clean-up of the data using the Automated Biometric Identification System.
“Subsequently, the detailed breakdown of the new registrants by age, gender, occupation and disability will be published for public information. At this preliminary stage, 56,017 (58%) of new registrants are female, while 50,429 (52.48%) are young people between the ages of 18 and 34.”
But, according to a former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Prof Chidi Odinkalu, the pronouncement by INEC yesterday, extending the Continuous Voter Registration, CVR exercise till 20th of this month, will be meaningless unless the Commission addresses the underlying issues that made the earlier exercise a failure.
Odinkalu who spoke to TNC correspondent, pointed out that the extension will amount to a waste of time, if INEC does not identify the challenges and take steps to address them.
“People are already applauding the INEC for the extension, but that is meaningless.
“This is because until they address the underlying fundamentals – more equipment, more personnel, better locations, more bandwidth, they are still not going to achieve anything meaningful.
“So, even if they extend it for the next two weeks under the same conditions, the result will be nothing to write home about,” he said.
Prof Odinkalu insisted that there is a need for concerted efforts from stakeholders, political parties, and the government, to get INEC to do the right thing, so that the extension will yield result.
In his words, “Amazingly, there are no voices being raised about this from the state on an issue on which, I believe, we can all sink our differences.
“The least that we can do is to insist in one voice that INEC must extend the process and adequately resource the extension with both machines and personnel.
“I expect the politicians and leaders of Anambra, irrespective of divide, to at least agree on this. I also expect the Anambra State Government to officially protest and bring this to the attention of INEC for urgent redress.”
