The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has announced that over 3.5 million Nigerians pre-registered online for voter cards within the first three weeks of its ongoing nationwide voter registration exercise.

This was disclosed in a statement signed on Monday by INEC’s National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, Sam Olumeku.

According to the Commission, as of Sunday, September 7, 2025, a total of 3,544,850 citizens had completed online pre-registration since the process began on August 18, 2025.

Of this figure, 1,709,933 (48.24 per cent) are male, while 1,834,917 (51.76 per cent) are female.

The majority, 2,291,809 (64.65 per cent), fall within the ages of 18 and 34, with 882,441 (24.89 per cent) identified as students.

On completed registrations, INEC disclosed that it would henceforth present both online and physical (in-person) figures in a single graphic.

The cumulative number of completed registrations since the physical exercise commenced on August 25, 2025, stood at 288,614 as of Thursday, September 4, 2025.

Out of this, 132,634 (45.96 per cent) are male and 155,980 (54.04 per cent) are female, with youths between 18 and 34 years making up 215,414 (74.64 per cent).

Students accounted for 114,150 (39.55 per cent) of the completed registrations.

A detailed breakdown of registrations by state, gender, age, occupation, and disability has been made available on the Commission’s website and official platforms.

INEC expressed appreciation to citizens and organizations mobilizing civic participation in the exercise, but reiterated that only Nigerians aged 18 years and above are eligible to register.

“It is illegal for anyone to encourage underage registration or those below 18 years of age to register in anticipation that they will attain the legal age of voting by the time the general election holds in 2027,” the agency disclosed in the statement.

INEC on August 20 said that eligible voters who pre-register during the ongoing continuous voter registration exercise cannot obtain the Permanent Voter Card (PVC) outside the office of the commission.

It said that online registration alone was not enough to complete voter registration.

It said that the PVC could not be issued after the pre-registration process because the biometrics of each eligible voter would have to be done physically at designated INEC offices.

“For now, you can’t sort everything at home because we still need to capture your biometrics. If we are able to capture your biometrics online, then there will be no need to go to those centres.

“You will just do everything at home and you will be done. But we still need to capture your fingerprint biometric, so that is the essence for you to come to the centre for your fingerprint biometric to be captured,” INEC Director of ICT, Bayode Lawrence, explained on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief. (Channels TV)

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