TO the electorate, young and old…
To the voters for participatory democracy, your PVC is your weapon and here is why:
You possess enormous power of that small voter card called PVC. In the end, we will certainly face the consequences of our electoral choices. After the election, we may return to reading from another book of lamentation. We may have been complaining about the 26 years that the locusts ate through the PDP from 1999-2015. We may still be lamenting that the last eight years under the ruling APC have been unspeakably harrowing. We may still be saying that Buhari’s government was even better than Tinubu’s only two years.We may still be wondering why democracy hasn’t delivered much good to us other than some form of freedom in the last 26 years. We can justifiably claim that democracy has become less participatory in the last 26 years with poor voter turnout even in off-season elections.
This isn’t a time for questions. It is indeed a time for action and reflection. It is a time to look out for our voter cards and where we can vote if we want democracy to work for our common good. Lest we forget, this is not a time to ask why a section of the country isn’t lamenting over collection of PVCs while a section is agonising over difficulties in registering and collections.
We may not want to ask now why political leaders and politicians in the southern part aren’t mobilising people to register to vote and keep their cards for elections. It isn’t a time yet to deconstruct the power of the North in organising their people to register and collect their cards in good time. And so before we rush to the media after the next election to shake the tables about how the colonial masters mysteriously handed Nigeria over to a section of the country through ‘manipulated’ population figure and allied matters, let the people conquer selves, first. And here is why:
– Let them stop blaming OSIEC and INEC about irregularities and voter apathy.
– Let us defeat the congenital election riggers who have brought reproach to our country through rigged leadership recruitment processes.
– Let us defeat these principalities and powers, vote buyers by first conquering voter apathy.
– It isn’t indeed a time for lamentation in the media. It is a time for participation.
– Please, don’t sell your PVC. It is evil and note that the buyers in your area know that they just want to kill support for your preferred candidates.
– They can’t use your PVC to vote.
Let’s consider the following data to encourage ourselves to action on the power that PVCs can give or lose.
– Whopping 6.7 million PVCs were not collected across 17 states and the nation’s capital as of January 4, 2023.
– With about five weeks before the presidential/National Assembly ballots on February 25, this was a huge figure.
– As of December 29, about 1,693,963 PVCs remained uncollected in Lagos State alone. PVC collection suffered a similar fate in other states.
– It was gratifying to know then too that some people were even paying to collect their cards to defeat self-disenfranchisement.
– The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) opened the collection windows on December 12. That exercise was rounded off on January 22.
– As INEC has been reiterating, any registrant without a PVC will not be allowed to vote at the polls, as only the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS) will be used. There is a proposal now that you may not need all the cards before you can vote. But it isn’t yet legal.
– For 2023, INEC’s register contains 93.4 million names, up from the 82.3 million in 2019. Many did not collect their PVCs then. The outcome was that just 28.6 million or 35 per cent voted in the 2019 presidential election.
Interpretation: The percentage (35%) means that the 2019 winner of the presidential election was not truly representative of the whole voters.
Researchers have established that apart from Zimbabwe’s 1996 presidential ballot that recorded a voter turnout of 32.3 per cent, Nigeria’s 2019 presidential election was the second lowest in recent elections in Africa. This trend trumped the recent off-season National Assembly and Governorship elections. Among others, the Lagos East senatorial election scored a turnout of 10 per cent in 2020.
– This dismal trend was also at play in the governorship ballot in Edo State in 2020, which recorded a turnout of 24.22 per cent;
– The Ondo governorship polls (2020) had 31.6 per cent voter turnout; Anambra in November 2021 recorded 10.38 per cent; Ekiti State in June 2022 had 36.5 per cent; and Osun State in July 2022 recorded 42.16 per cent.
– This is tainting democracy in Nigeria where voter apathy has taken steam out of popular participation.
2023 elections: Nigeria’s voter turnout drops to lowest
ON February 25, 2023, Nigeria had its presidential election, a widely anticipated affair, with the lowest number of voters recorded since 2011.
It was a race between 18 candidates, but considered between four leading contenders; Bola Ahmed Tinubu,candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC); Atiku Abubakar, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Rabiu Kwankwaso, the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) candidate and Peter Obi, the Labour Party (LP) candidate.
The days preceding the election were tense and filled with passion between candidates and their supporters. The election for its dynamics drew the attention of many — Nigerians within the country, Nigerians in the diaspora, and spectators.
But as popular as the election was among Nigerians, the turnout was low.
Increased registration, decreased votes
The turnout of voters for the presidential election is a new record in Nigeria’s long history of political apathy, with 93 million registered voters – the highest in any election – and 87 million collected PVCs.
– In the voter turnout in the last four presidential elections
– The 2023 presidential election is the 10th and has the lowest voter turnout rate in the last four election cycles.
– More than 93 million Nigerians registered to vote, but only 25 million voted. This is to say only 2.7 in every ten registered voters determined the outcome of the election. With a 29 per cent turnout rate, the 2023 election might also be the lowest turnout of voters in Africa.
The election in 2019 had 84 million (84,004,084) registered voters and 82 million (82344107) PVCs collected; in 2015, it was 68 million (68,833,476) and 67 million (67,422,005) PVCs collected. And in 2011, there were 73 million (73,528,040) registered voters.
Since 2011, the turnout for elections has been declining. That year, turnout for the presidential polls stood at 53.68 per cent, with 39 million votes cast. In 2015 it fell to 47.09 per cent, with 31 million votes. Then to 35.66 per cent, with 29 million voters in 2019, an ICIR analysis showed.
Let’s look at this: turnout for the 2023 presidential election varied across geopolitical zones.
Using the number of PVCs collected in each geopolitical zones, The ICIR analysis showed that turnout in the southeast was lowest and highest in the north-central.
Percentage of turnout during the 2023 presidential election
– Turnout in the southeast was 22.30 per cent out of 10.4m PVC collected.
– In the south-south, turnout was 23.28 per cent out of 13 million PVCs collected.
– Voters in the southwest comprised only 28.71 per cent of the 15 million PVCs collected.
– The northeast had a 30.39 per cent turnout out of 11.9 million PVCs collected.
– The northwest turnout was 32.61 per cent out of 21.4 million PVCs collected. And in the north-central, turnout was 32.83 per cent of 14.6 million PVCs collected.
– The registered voters in the southeast were 14.4 million;
– The south-south had 10.9m registered voters;
– The southwest had 17.9 million registered voters.
– The northeast had 12.5 million registered voters,
– The northwest had 22.3 million, and
– The north central had 15.3 million.
The data above have spoken to the points at issue: the South West and South East that had two notable presidential candidates had unspeakable voter apathy. If they are not too young to rule, or complain, why are they too young to vote?
Message to young voters
That is why I would like to join concerned citizens in encouraging the young ones, who are angry with the present ruling class and the power elite in the country to continue ORGANISING instead of AGONISING.
I have been reading some views of some young Nigerians who daily organise and haul insults at some elders who dare to accuse them of emptiness and lack of organisational ability in their quest for change. Therefore, I would like to appeal to the angry elders on the need to spare their rods against the youth at this time for some specific reasons.
Understanding why the youths are angry about elections
One, I believe that the youth too have been remarkably inspired by so many unethical behaviours they have found in us, (their elders). There are the young ones who have found wealth without work in numerous parents and relations.
As I have also noted several times in the same construct, not a few young students are aware they did not pass their post-primary final examinations used for dubious admissions into some universities and polytechnics. They know the elders who arranged their admissions. They know how much some parents paid for their dissertations too. Some old lawyers have been caught while helping some young lawyers to sit for final Bar Examinations.
In this country where we condemn the young ones for too many unethical behaviours, there are so many elders and even unethical professors who have incredibly assisted candidates to enroll for doctoral degrees and arranged theses to be artfully ‘defended’ in some strange universities. Many young ones and wards of political leaders know how much their fathers paid some unethical senior ministers in the temple of justice (lawyers) to settle electoral tribunals to procure mandates.
I know so many (retired) directors and permanent secretaries who knew about how much some of their colleagues paid some cabals in the federal bureaucracy to pass promotion examinations to be directors and permanent secretaries. The young ones are well aware of these shenanigans and peccadillos. It is curious therefore, how we expect them to be better than us, ethically. It is hypocritical too to expect them to prepare to take over and do better when we too have failed to organise significant succession arrangements on our various beats.
So, instead of castigating our young ones as ‘efulefu’ (worthless), we should advise them through voter education to come out of the social media cocoon, and fight to collect their voter cards since they have registered. We need to tell them about the power they have to change their present condition through their PVCs… To be continued…
– The above is an excerpt from a paper I presented at the Forum of State Independent Electoral Commissions in Nigeria (FOSIECON), National Delegates Conference 2025, at Crispan Hotel, Jos, Plateau State, May 22, 2025…
- Oloja is former editor of The Guardian newspaper and his column, Inside Stuff, runs on the back page of the newspaper on Sundays. The column appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Mondays.