There has been an on-going discussion regarding the different rates across the country in which registered voters have applied for and successfully picked up their permanent voters cards (PVCs). At Kingmakers, we took a look at the numbers released by INEC as regards PVCs, and found some interesting statistics.

In terms of rate collection there was a national average of 47%. Rivers had the highest collection rate as over 70% of its registered voters picked up their PVC, as compared to Lagos, which had the lowest at 29% despite having the largest number of registered voters in the country at over 5 million.

There was a difference of 2% in the rate of collection between Northern states (48%) and Southern states (46%). Across the geopolitical zones, the South South topped the list at 58%, with the North West (56%), North East (45.2%), North Central (43.7%), South East (40.5%) and the South West (39.5%) trailing behind.

In terms of sheer numbers, the states in the North West zone will be of considerable interest to any presidential aspirant as its 8 million PVC carrying voters is at par with the total number of that of the whole the Southern states (South East – 1.4 million, South South – 2.4 million, and South West – 4.4 million).

In fact the when the North West numbers are combined with the North Central (3.9 million) and North East (3.5 million), the 15.5 million strong voters are an advantage to the present incumbent, President Buhari, who swept all three zones, which gave him a huge margin over his opponents in the popular vote.

However it is important to note that the popular vote is one of the requirement needed to win the presidential election, with the other being having received at least a quarter of the votes at each of at least two-thirds of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).