By Naomi Uzor
Lagos—THE  Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has said with the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration, CVR, the commission will have a register of over 80 million voters in 2019.

Yakubu

Speaking at the INEC private sector forum organised by the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, LCCI, INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, said since April 2017 when the CVR exercise started, 9,700,999 new voters had been registered as at 14th June 2018, noting that if added to the current register of 69,720,350 voters, the commission would have register of over 80 million voters in 2019.

He said in an effort to promote sanctity of electoral process, the commission broke  tradition by establishing the principle that going forward, national elections should hold on the third Saturday of the month of February of the election year starting by Presidential and National Assembly, to be followed in two weeks later by  state elections (Governor and state Assembly).

According to him, “Just like elections proper, election dates in Nigeria are also no longer a matter of guess work. We believe that doing so will engender sanctity and give sufficient time to political parties, civil society organisations, the media, security agencies and the business community to plan. The Commission has already started the countdown to the elections in earnest.”