Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria has an unstable economic and social climate around election season, much like any other highly populated and powerful country in the world the political atmosphere is watched by the everyone. With a corrupt, lazy and arcade government in place, 2019 is an open opportunity for the change currently sweeping the nation in other areas like tech, fashion, music, art, media, culture, business to influence the political scene, a change that’s begun to come into light when Buhari signed in the #NotTooYoungToRun bill. The political system has been run by two major parties, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). PDP lost political power in 2015 after Goodluck Jonathan lost the presidency to the current leader, President Buhari. PDP ruled the country for 16 years prior.
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) set up in 1998 oversees all elected office elections from the presidential, gubernatorial, national assembly – senate and house of representatives, local level etc.
The electoral body through a press statement disclosed Nigeria officially has 91 registered political parties, so far (At the last count in January 2018, there were 68 parties) and had registered 12.1 million new voters as at 11th August 2018.
This brings the number of political parties to 91 and will be the last round of registration until after the general elections of 16th February 2019. This suspension is in line with the Section 78 (1) of the Electoral Act, which requires all applications for registration as a political party to be concluded latest six months to a general election, INEC’s recent statement affirmed.
Permanent Voters Card (PVCs) registration which started in April 2017 and was supposed to end on 17th August 2018 has been extended to the last day of August 2018. We don’t think there’s a reason the government should end the PVCs registration this year knowing the excruciating process behind getting a PVC, a process most Nigerians who are already dealing with the hardship of daily life find difficult to accomplish. Nonetheless, it’s very important Nigerian citizens get their PVC and vote in 2019 for real change.
Breaking: The Commission has decided to extend the CVR to 31st August 2018. The exercise will continue in all the designated registration centres every day, including weekends, but excluding public holidays, between 9am and 5pm. pic.twitter.com/A0wy7QJhJP
— INEC Nigeria (@inecnigeria) August 14, 2018
