The run-up to the 2023 general elections has proved to be one of a kind. For the first time since the return of our democracy, the youth have jumped to the forefront of the mission to take back Nigeria from corrupt, incompetent and visionless leadership at all levels.

The youth, who have been the hewers of wood and drawers of water for the selfish political buccaneers now want to dictate the pace to the general elections of 2023. So far, they have demonstrated this resolve through the campaigns for massive participation in the Permanent Voter’s Card, PVC registration.

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC’s, Continued Registration, CVR, exercise, which started in June 2021, was largely ignored. But new dynamics within the various political parties woke up the youth. They invaded the registration centres in unprecedented numbers. INEC had to extend its registration deadline from June 30 to July 31, 2022.

On Monday, August 1, 2022, the Commission came out with the following figures. The number of fresh registrants during the youth rush was 10,489,972. Completed registration stood at 12,298,944. It was further broken down to: Male – 6,074,078; Female – 6,224,866; Persons Living with Disability: 87,083 and Youths: 8,784,677. This brings the total number of registered voters in Nigeria to 96.2 million.

Experience has, however, shown that more people register than collect their PVCs. On June 13, 2022, INEC lamented that there were over 20 million unclaimed voter’s cards in its offices nationwide. That is more than enough to elect a president, going by previous electoral figures. Lagos alone has over 1.12 million uncollected cards, which is more than the total figure cast during the 2019 governorship election in the state.

The maximum collection of voter’s cards and turnouts to vote on election day are crucial in determining the democratic outcomes of elections. Nigerian democracy is suffering from the double apathy of voter’s card collection and turnout to vote.

INEC has issued a schedule for the collection of the newly-produced voter’s cards. All PVCs registered from June 2021 to January 15 are now available at local government councils. The cards of those registered between January 16, 2022 and June 30, 2022 will be ready in October, while those registered in July should expect their cards in November 2022.

The journey to take back Nigeria has only been one-third done. The bigger tasks are to collect the cards and vote. Nigerian voters must finish the good work they started. The effort to elect good leaders is not a tea party. It is a struggle of the peaceful kind. It is fought with granite determination. Abandoning our PVCs at INEC offices will give the ever-plotting politicians the chance to undermine our popular choices.