Presidential candidates in the upcoming election have the highest number of voters to woo in the history of democracy in Nigeria.
The reason is that Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, on Wednesday, announced that the voter register had swollen up to 93.5m.
This thus shows how much work the candidates have to do, especially the three leading ones: Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi and Bola Tinubu (in alphabetical order).
Analysis of the preliminary register reveals that Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Rivers, Katsina and Oyo states have the highest number of registered voters.
Lagos has 7.57 per cent; Kano, 6.34 per cent; Kaduna, 4.65 per cent; Rivers, 3.77 per cent; Katsina, 3.76 per cent and Oyo 3.51 per cent.
A breakdown by The PUNCH also indicates that voters in the six states constitute 27.68m or 29.59 per cent of the entire registered voters.
According to the preliminary voter register, Lagos, Kano, Kaduna and Rivers states lead with 7,075,192; 5,927,565; 4,345,469 and 3,532,990, respectively.
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They are followed by Katsina with 3,519,260 and Oyo, with 3,275,045.
Further analysis also revealed that the North-West geopolitical zone, which comprises the seven states of Kano, Katsina, Kaduna, Kebbi, Sokoto, Zamfara and Jigawa, with a total of 22.27m voters, has the highest number of registered voters.
As of the 2019 elections, the North-West had 20.15m voters. However, the data from INEC revealed that the zone got additional 2.12m voters during the recently-concluded continuous voter registration.
The South-West, which earlier had 16.29m voters as of 2019, now has 17.93m voters, having added a total of 1.64m newly-registered voters.
