APC chieftain urges INEC to review PWD voter figures

The leader of the All Progressives Congress for Persons with Disabilities, Tolu Bankole, has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission to revise their reporting of voter figures for individuals with disabilities. In a statement issued in Abuja, Bankole claimed that the 137,487 PWD figure being reported by INEC does not accurately represent the total number of registered voters with disabilities in Nigeria.

Bankole explained that the figure only accounts for those who identified as having a disability after the commission added a specific disability field to its Continuous Voter Registration process in 2021. He argued that previous registration systems did not consistently include disability status as a separate data field, meaning voters with disabilities who registered before 2021 were not included in the disability-disaggregated figures.

According to Bankole, the 137,487 figure is a "flow measure" of disability status from 2021 onwards, not a "stock measure" of all PWDs in the full historical register. He urged INEC to clearly qualify PWD statistics with the limitations of the data, intensify targeted sensitization to encourage accurate self-reporting, and explore methods to improve the historical visibility of the full PWD cohort on the register.

Bankole also noted that the figure could still be an undercount, as some PWDs did not indicate their status during registration. He cited poor awareness, stigma, and the perception that declaring a disability was unnecessary as reasons for this failure to self-identify. The former lawmaker called on INEC to clearly qualify PWD statistics with the temporal and methodological limitations of the data and to intensify sensitization efforts to ensure PWDs understand the importance of accurately indicating their status.