The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has released data showing that a total of 96, 303, 016 eligible voters registered to vote in the 2023 general election.
According to the statistics, northwest which is made up of Sokoto, Kano, Kebbi, Katsina, Zamfara, Kaduna and Jigawa states topped the table with 22, 672, 373 prospective voters.
In 2019, the zone had 20.15 million voters. The latest report showed that 2.5 million new voters were added during the recently concluded continuous voter registration thus bringing the total to 22.67 million.
The southwest, made up of Lagos, Oyo, Ondo, Osun and Ekiti states came second with 18, 332, 191 voters.
The south-south geo-political zone comprising Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Cross River, Bayelsa, Edo and Delta states, recorded 15.2 million voters, up from 12.8 million.
The north central made up of Nasarawa, Kogi, Benue, Niger, Kwara and Plateau states recorded 14.1 million voters.
The northeast zone consisting of Yobe, Borno, Taraba, Adamawa, Bauchi and Gombe states recorded 12.8 million voters.
The southeast geopolitical zone comprising Ebonyi, Enugu, Abia, Anambra and Imo states now has 11.49 million voters.
The number of registered voters in the Federal Capital Territory grew from 1.3 million to 1.5 million.
A state-by-state analysis showed that Lagos State maintained its position as the state with the highest number of registered voters.
The total number of registered voters in the state increased from 6.5 million to 7.1 million.
Kano State also maintained its second position, adding 569, 103 new voters to increase its number to 6.02 million.
Kaduna State now has 4.4 million registered voters while Rivers State has overtaken Katsina as the fourth largest state in terms of voters.
While Rivers now has 3.68 million voters, Katsina has 3.57 million.
Some other states with a sizeable number of registered voters are Delta (3.3 million) and Oyo (3.3 million).
Also, Ekiti State retained its position as the state with the lowest number of registered voters despite rising from 909, 967 registered voters to 1, 034, 911.
The commission also announced that the number of registrants who completed online and physical registration as of July 31 when the CVR registration ended was 12, 298, 944, made up of 6,074,078 males and 6,224,866 females.
It also stated that 87,083 were people living with disabilities (PWDs) while 8,784,677 were youths.
A breakdown of the figure revealed that of the fresh registrants, 6,359,711 came from the north, while 5,939,233 reside in the South, indicating a disparity of 420,478.
Going by geo-political zones, the northwest recorded the highest with 2, 514, 273 new registrants, while the south-south was second with 2,458,095 applications.
The north central followed with 2,314,368 registrants while the southwest had 2,039,982.
Also, about 1,531,070 applications came from the northeast while the southeast had the least completed registration with 1,441,156.
A state-by-state breakdown revealed that Lagos and Kano had the highest number of new registrants with 585,620 and 569,103 respectively.
Delta followed closely with 523,517 applications with Yobe and Ekiti recording the lowest with 152,414 and 124, 844 applications.
Of the 12.2 million newly registered voters, about 8.7 million are between the ages of 18 and 34 while about 2.4 million are between ages 35 and 49.
Those between ages 50 and 69 are about 856, 017 while about 127, 541 are over 70.
The statistics also showed that more women registered during the latest CVR than men. While 6,224,866 were women, 6,074,078 were men.
