A week after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced that there were 93.5 million prospective voters in the coming general election, leading
candidates for the presidential poll have reviewed part of their game plans on how to secure the vital majority votes in the geopolitical zones. The review is largely in response to the huge volumes of potential votes in a num- ber of states in the geopolitical zones, voting patterns in past elections. To win, a candidate is required to have the majority of votes cast, and in at least 25 percent of the votes in 24 or more of the 36 states.
Therefore, camps of four leading presidential candidates: Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP); Senator Bola Tinubu (All Progressives congress); Mr Peter Obi (Labour Party (LP) and Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) are involved in deft moves to gain a superior advantage in the buildup to the election.
At least 22 states cutting across the six geo- political zones form epic centre of the battle to sway the huge number of prospective voters to determine who becomes president after the February 25 ballot.
The states, which cut across the geopolitical zones, include Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Borno, Oyo, Delta, Plateau, Benue, Ogun, Osun, Kebbi, Kogi, Niger, Sokoto, Zamfara Abia, Anambra, Bauchi and Adamawa, Ondo and Enugu, with registered number of voters rang- ing between 1. 9 million and five million registered voters in each.
The candidates and their handlers are said to have paid a lot of attention to Kano, Lagos, Oyo, Delta, Katsina and Ogun states because of the antecedents of voters in those states in the past.
The cumulative number of registered voters, coupled with the constitutional requirements on spread has made the contest for those states more passionate and demanding for all the vested interests.
Last week, INEC said the total number of eligible voters has gone up by 9,464,924, that is, 11.3 per cent from the 84,004,084 recorded in the 2019 general election to 93,469,008 voters in 2023. The new figure consists of 49,054,162 or 52.5 per cent male, with the rest 44,414,846 or 47.5 per cent consisting female voters.
According to the overall figure, 37,060,399 or 39.65 per cent of voters fall within the ages of 18 and 34; while 33,413,591 or 35.75 per cent are middle-aged persons of between 35 and 49 years. A total of 17,700,270 or 18.94 per cent are elderly voters between the ages of 50 and 69, while the remaining 5,294,748 or 5.66 per cent are senior citizens above 70 years.
More instructive is the spread of the entire number of voters across the six zones, with the North-West having the highest number of registered voters of 22,255,562, as against the 20.15m voters it had in 2019. The South- West, which in 2019 had 16,292,212 registered voters, it gained a total of 1,666,754 new registered voters to the 17, 958, 966 voters in 2019 to come second, while the North- Central, which had 13,366,070 registered voters in 2019, has 15,363,731 ahead the coming elections.
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