Concerns over disenfranchisement of over 3 million students in 2023 polls

With only 30 days until Nigeria’s presidential election, the first significant election in the world in 2023, there are numerous concerns about the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

These include issues with picking up voter identification cards, allegations of extortion by INEC employees, and reports that non-indigenous people in some states are not given voter identification cards. 

As the deadline for collecting Permanent Voters Cards, or PVCs, approaches on January 29, there are concerns that up to 3.2 million Nigerian students who were at home during the continuous voter registration campaign may not be eligible to vote in the 2023 general elections.

The development is a result of the eight-month-long, prolonged industrial action that the Academic Staff Union of Universities, or ASUU, members began for the majority of 2022. 

Recall that on February 14, 2022, ASUU announced a strike in protest of the federal government’s callous treatment of the requests and predicament of lecturers. 

ASUU President Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke stated that “the government’s reaction to the union’s requests had not been appropriately handled” when announcing the labour strike. 

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, intervened and convinced ASUU to end the strike after eight months, in October 2022. 

Following the failure of all negotiations, Gbajabiamila reportedly interfered in the conflict to mediate a settlement between the federal government and ASUU, according to Obasanjonews24. 

During the strike, the countrywide Continuous Voter Registration, or CVR, exercise was in progress.

It started in June 2021 and peaked while many students were home from school. 

The INEC declared the completion of the voter registration procedure on July 31, 2022, to allow the electoral authority to clean up the register and delete multiple registrants using the Automated Biometric Identification System, or ABIS.

Mahmood Yakubu, the chairman of INEC, announced during the commission’s third quarterly meeting with political parties in Abuja in 2022 that there were 9,518,188 freshly registered voters nationwide. He also noted that the general elections in 2023 will be held for young people. 

As for the demographic breakdown, there are slightly more female voters (4.8 million, or 50.82%) than male voters (4.6 million, or 49.18%), with 7.2 million new voters, or 76.5 percent, being young adults between the ages of 18 and 34. According to Yakubu, 3.8 million people (40.8%) work as students, according to Yakubu.

The commission published the schedule for collecting PVCs from people who registered after the voter register cleanup, as was to be expected. It stated that PVC collection would begin on December 12, 2022, and would likely last until January 22, 2023. 

However, in response to widespread concern from across the country, the INEC extended the deadline for collecting PVCs by seven days.

Festus Okoye, the INEC Commissioner for Voter Education, who made the announcement of the extended PVC collection deadline, said the activity would now end on January 29 rather than January 22, as it had been originally planned. 

The commission is committed to giving registered voters plenty of time to obtain their PVCs prior to the upcoming election. 

“As a result, the collecting period for PVCs has been extended by eight days.” The PVC collection will last until January 29, 2023, rather than concluding on January 22, 2023. Currently, collection hours are from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day (including weekends), according to Okoye. 

However, certain stakeholders, including political parties, are not happy with the one-week extension and have expressed worry over Nigerian students who registered at their various home locations during the ASUU strike but are now unable to obtain their PVCs. 

One of these stakeholders, Dr. Sam Amadi, a prominent academic and the director of the Abuja School of Social and Political Thoughts, thought it was essential to let students leave class and go home to pick up their PVCs. 

Following a press conference held by the School of Social and Political Thoughts in Abuja on Tuesday, Amadi spoke to the Daily Post. 

He noted that the number of youths (18-35) was 37,060,399, or 40% of the total number of eligible voters reported by the INEC, which was 93,469,008 people.

Before the extension was approved, some stakeholders, including political parties, expressed concerns about the procedure. They gripe about how slowly things move along. Others complain about INEC employees being hindered or about insufficient planning for a more widespread collection. Students who have returned to class but were enrolled at home while classes were closed due to protracted strikes raise concerns. “Is it fair to anticipate that these pupils will leave school, return home, and pick up their PVCs during the time allotted by INEC for PVC collection?” Amadi questioned. 

He continued by saying that many registered voters had yet to pick up their voter cards as a result of INEC employees acting improperly by conspiring with politicians to deny some registered voters their PVCs and frequently as a result of avoidable operational hiccups. 

Students from the University of Abuja expressed regret to the Daily Post that the strike had prevented them from voting in the upcoming elections. 

They criticised the management of the tertiary institution for their unwillingness to take into account a break for students to pick up their PVCs, which was a crucial need for taking part in the election. 

“It appears that we students are powerless.” Many of us can’t get ourselves to go home to get our PVCs since we reside outside of the Federal Capital Territory, or FCT. “It is up to the university administration to decide whether or not we will take a break,” said Kephas, a Kaduna State resident studying political science at the 400-level. 

“I just wish I could travel and pick up my PVC, but as it stands, I can’t help it,” said Edozie, an Abia State native learning English. It is regrettable that Nigerian politicians have used the youth as a scapegoat. 

Attempts by Obasanjonews24 to get in touch with the university’s public relations officer to find out if the administration had made plans to provide students a break period were unsuccessful. 

A communication expert at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Dr. Chidiebere Nwachukwu, stated the same thing in an interview with the Daily Post: “Youths should be provided appropriate support to participate actively in the democratic process.” 

“I do believe that since we want to make this election as inclusive as possible, enough provisions should be provided for the students to go and obtain their PVCs.” The young people who are leading the process can only do this if they are given every opportunity to actively take part in choosing the new leaders. 

“If we don’t have the input mechanism to make sure that people who should engage are given the opportunity to actively participate in the democratic process, then there is no way we can be talking about democracy,” he stated.