The All Progressives Congress National Leader for Persons with Disabilities, Tolu Bankole, has urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to review how it presents figures for Persons with Disabilities in the national voters’ register.
Bankole made the call in a statement issued in Abuja on Sunday, following INEC’s disclosure that 137,487 PWDs had been captured in its available voter data ahead of the 2027 general elections.
INEC disclosed the figure on September 16 during a national strategy engagement with the Joint National Association of Persons with Disabilities and other disability organisations in Abuja.
The commission said the figure was obtained from data compiled by its Information and Communication Technology Department before the Automated Fingerprint Identification System exercise.
The breakdown comprised 13,080 visually impaired persons, 9,299 hearing-impaired persons, 30,561 persons with albinism, 19,430 persons with physical impairments and 54,941 people under other disability categories.
Bankole, however, argued that the figure should not be presented as the total number of registered voters with disabilities in Nigeria.
According to him, the disability-disaggregated data largely reflects voters whose disability status was captured during the period when INEC introduced disability status as part of its voter registration process.
He said voters who registered before that period could have been left out of the disability-specific figures because previous registration systems did not consistently record disability status as a separate field.
“The 137,487 figure is therefore a flow measure of indicated disability from the 2021-present window, not a stock measure of all PWDs in the full historical register,” Bankole said.
He urged INEC to clearly state the temporal and methodological limitations of its PWD statistics whenever such figures are released.
Bankole also argued that the number could be an undercount even among voters registered during the period when disability status was captured.
He said some persons with disabilities registered without indicating their status, citing poor awareness, stigma and the belief that declaring their disability was unnecessary.
The APC leader called on INEC to intensify sensitisation so that PWDs completing or updating their voter registration understand the importance of accurately indicating their disability status.
He also asked the commission to explore, within legal and privacy constraints, mechanisms for improving the historical visibility of persons with disabilities already contained in the voters’ register.
The call comes as INEC steps up engagement with disability organisations ahead of the 2027 general elections.
The commission’s latest engagement focused on targeted sensitisation and mobilisation aimed at increasing the participation and turnout of PWDs.
The issue of accurate disability data has implications for electoral planning, including voter education, accessibility and the deployment of appropriate assistive materials at polling units.
Bankole said clearer presentation of the figures would help ensure that the data are properly understood and used in planning for persons with disabilities during future elections.
