Tolu Bankole, the All Progressives Congress (APC) National Leader for Persons with Disabilities, has urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to review its presentation of figures for persons with disabilities (PWDs) on the national voters’ register.

Bankole made the call in a statement issued in Abuja on Sunday, arguing that the 137,487 PWDs currently cited by INEC should not be interpreted as the total number of registered voters with disabilities in the country.

He said the figure largely represented voters who indicated their disability status after INEC introduced a dedicated disability field during the Continuous Voter Registration process in 2021.

According to him, voters who registered before 2021 were not necessarily included in the disability-disaggregated data because previous registration systems did not consistently capture disability status as a separate field.

Bankole said the 137,487 figure should therefore be treated as a measure of disability status indicated within the period covered by the relevant data, rather than a complete historical count of all PWDs on the voters’ register.

The figure comprises 13,080 visually impaired persons, 9,299 hearing-impaired persons, 30,561 persons with albinism, 19,430 persons with physical impairments and 54,941 persons under other disability categories.

He also said the figure could still represent an undercount of PWDs who registered from 2021 because some voters may have failed to indicate their disability status during registration.

Bankole attributed such omissions to factors including inadequate awareness, stigma and perceptions that declaring disability status was unnecessary.

He urged INEC to consistently state the temporal and methodological limitations of its PWD statistics and intensify public sensitisation to encourage eligible voters with disabilities to accurately indicate their status during registration or updates.

He also called on the commission to explore, within legal and privacy requirements, ways of improving the historical visibility of PWDs already captured on the register.

INEC has separately said its engagement with disability organisations ahead of the 2027 elections is intended to improve the participation of PWDs and identify barriers to their involvement in the electoral process.

The commission has also identified accessibility measures including Braille ballot guides, magnifying glasses, the EC30 PWD form and sign-language interpretation during collation activities.