The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says while it extended the deadline for the Continuous Voter Registration, it observed that many Nigerians tend to wait until the last minute before getting things done.

INEC’s National Commissioner of Voter Education and Publicity, Mr Solomon Soyebi, said this on Monday during an appearance on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily.

According to him, the commission registered over a million persons within the two-week deadline extension which eventually came to an end on August 31.

“The truth is even if we leave this (CVR) till the eve of the elections, we will still have such (rush) in Nigeria because people will always leave things till the last minute,” he said.

INEC had extended the Continuous Voter Registration exercise by two weeks, following various complaints by Nigerians such as inefficiency of the machines and distance to registration centers.

Soyebi explained that the commission took the complaints into consideration and expanded its operations.

“What we did was to expand our operations. We extended the time till 5:00 pm but we did not increase the number of machines. Even with that, we had a lot of people that came out. We captured more than one million in two weeks,” he said.

He, however, expressed concerns that while large numbers had turned out for the exercise, the number of young people who registered may have been lesser than expected.

“Even with the expansion of the centers, what we discovered was that people were always rushing.

“Our major fear is that are we really capturing people who are supposed to be captured? We were expecting people who are 19 years since 1999 and those who missed the opportunity. But it seems as if we have more of people who missed the opportunity,” he stated.

According to him, the commission now has about 150 days to embark on post-registration activities ahead of next year’s polls.