January 31, 2023/CSL Research
As the February elections draw closer, news reports are filled with allegations and counter allegations. Based on a Thisday news report, the presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has alleged that the current fuel scarcity in the country and the decision of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to redesign the N200, N500 and 1,000 banknotes were contrived to sabotage his victory at next month’s election.
In response, to Tinubu’s comments, the presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, alleged that the APC candidate was frustrated by his inability to stop the cashless policy and currency redesign of the CBN, which he believes would curb vote buying and enhance the credibility of next month’s election.
We had noted in our earlier reports that the Naira redesign policy may have been partly motivated by a desire to curtail vote buying, particularly considering the timing of the policy. We recall that President Muhammadu Buhari said there was no going back on the planned redesign of the N1,000, N500, and N200 bank notes, adding that politicians won’t be allowed to mobilise resources and thugs to intimidate voters in the 2023 general elections. Twentyfive days to the February 25th 2023 elections, election campaigns appear slow compared to the 2015 and 2019 campaigns. We believe this is partly due to the ongoing Naira redesign and new notes scarcity hitches amidst the prolonged petrol scarcity that has scuttled movements.
Meanwhile, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has released the final list of registered voters for the 2023 general elections. On the list, Lagos State has the highest number of registered voters with 7,060,195, followed by Kano State with 5,921,370. The distribution by age group shows that 37,060,399 (39.65%) are youth between the ages of 18
and 34; 33,413,591 (35.75 %) are middle aged persons between the ages of 35 and 49; 17,700,270 (18.94%) are voters between the ages of 50 and 69, while 5,294,748 (5.66%) are senior citizens aged 70 and above. In terms of occupational distribution, students constitute the largest category with 26,027,481 (27.8 %) of all voters, followed by 14,742,554 (15.8%) Farmers/Fishermen and 13,006,939 (13.9 per elderly cent) housewives.
In our view, the increase in youth participation is a fall out of the EndSARS movement and an indication that the youth will participate actively in the elections, implying that the elections and its outcome will likely be determined by them. This also means that any serious contestant or party must actively engage the young people and seek to address their concerns. That said, despite the large number of registered youth, we note that Nigeria’s
elections in recent years have been marred by low turnout of voters on election day. Nigeria’s voter turnout in the 2019 general elections was only about 35%.
