In the ongoing nationwide Continuous Voter Registration, a total of 73,609 People with Disabilities have finished registering. This was indicated by the Independent National Electoral Commission in a report. The report also revealed that although 197,707 PLWDs had pre-registered online, they had not yet finished the registration process. The report also stated that 9,763,873 Nigerians have finished registering (3,339,012 online and 6,424,861 in person). According to the gender distribution, 4,835,322 men and 4,928,551 women have finished the registration process.
In front of the upcoming general election in 2023, INEC has committed to helping the PLWDs. The commission has been encouraged by advocacy groups to ensure that the PLWD community is actively included in the voting process. Lukman Salami, chairman of the Nigerian Organisation of the Blind’s branch in Lagos, said in a statement that the association was collaborating with the commission to boost the number of PLWDs registered.
Despite the fact that there is now no mention of a disability on the forms, they are collaborating with INEC to guarantee that more of their members are registered. Since there was no column to indicate whether a person had a disability or not back then, they used to register like everyone else. As a result, the data is recent and does not include the number of PLWDs who had previously registered.
