By Adekunle Mariam, Abeokuta
The Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) on Wednesday revealed that 2,449,000 eligible voter have been registered in Ogun state .
The Commission added that within the period began its online free registration, a total of 259,713 people have been registered in the state.
The Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Ogun state, Prof. Abdulganiyu Raji, who revealed this in Abeokuta, the State capital, at a sensitisation meeting between Ogun INEC REC and the representatives of Students' union government in the state on Continous Voters Registration exercise.
The programme was organised by the office of the Special Assistant to the State Governor, Dapo Abiodun, on Student matters, Azeez Adeyemi.
Students were drawn from all the tertiary institutions across the State.
The REC while delivering his lecture on INEC CVR and students Civic rights, said the statistics with the commission has shown that 85 per cent of new registrants of the Permanent Voter Cards are youths.
According to him, in the first week of registration, a cumulative 259,713 people were registered, out of which 70 pet cent were youths.
According to him, the trend has improved as of Monday as 2,449,648 persons have registered out of which 1,592,178 are youths who are in the age range of 18-34 years.
He said when those within the age range of 35-49 years were factored into it, the number rose to 2,122,000 thousand youths which makes about 85% of the total registration.
He said :" In line with the demography that I read to you earlier, out of this 259,713, 175,859 were youths constituting over 70 per cent of those who registered.
"With this, I think we are moving in a positive direction because if you contitute 95 per cent of the population, and about 70 per cent have registered within the first week are youths and that trend has actually continued until now.
"The last figure that we recorded which was as at this Monday, we had recorded 2,449,648 free registration, out of which 1,592,178 were youths. This youth between the age of 18 and 34 years , if I add youths between the age of 35 and 49 years to that, out of 2,449,000 registrants , 2,122,000 youths have registered between the age of 18 and 49, that is over 85 per cent of those who are registrants .
"Nigeria is moving in a positive direction, you can go to our website, any of the two, you will see the information".
"My message to you, youths is that if you want a brighter future, our permanent voters card is our power, we must register, if you do not register, you can not pick the person that will lead you.
"If you allow some other people to pick your leaders for you, you will have no reason to criticize anybody, whichever way they have done it and if we have 95 per cent of Nigerians being youths and then youths who want to secure their own future can not use their hands to determine their own destiny, I think then the problem lies with us, part of some of these problems is that we must avoid hate speeches and hate news".
Earlier, the Special Adviser to the Governor on Students matters had appealed to the students to take the issue of vote registration seriously .
Adeyemi urged the INEC to create an enabling environment for the students who are eligible to vote .
He commended the state governor for his support to the programme and students matters .
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