Voters Registration and the Road to April 2011 Election

Abuja, Nigeria. March 2011.      

Nigerians will go to the polls April 9 2011 to elect a new president. There also will be federal and state elections over a three-week period. In preparation for the election, the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) started the registration of voters to ensure that eligible voters are properly registered and to reduce fraudulent duplication of voters. NOI Polls Ltd recently conducted its monthly snap poll to find out the opinion of Nigerians on the recently completed voters registration exercise. In the survey, 9 out of 10 people interviewed confirmed they registered to vote.

9 out of every 10 people that registered to vote said they registered in order to vote while the remaining 2 percent said they registered just to have the voter registration card.

Nigerians seem to have confidence in the forthcoming elections, as a majority of registered voters believe their votes will count. When asked whether they think their vote will count in the April 2011 election, 82 percent of those who registered said they think their votes will count, 10 percent said they do not know whether their votes would count while 4 percent think their votes would not count.