Originally posted by the Voice of America. Voice of America content is produced by the Voice of America, a United States federal government-sponsored entity, and is in the public domain. Nigeriaâs Votersâ List Display Ends Friday Peter Clottey February 17, 2011 Fatima Bello display her new voters registration card in Lagos, Nigeria, Saturday, Jan. 15, 2011. Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS Fatima Bello display her new voters registration card in Lagos, Nigeria, Saturday, Jan. 15, 2011. An effort to register 70 million voters across Nigeria wobbled to life Saturday, as volunteers spread out across Africa's most populous nation ahead of its April presidential election. The two-week effort will see volunteers in some 120,000 locations the nation's arid north, fertile central valleys and its oil-rich southern delta use laptop computers to register eligible voters. An official of Nigeriaâs Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said his organizationâs week-long nationwide display of the votersâ list ends Friday ahead of Aprilâs presidential, parliamentary and state governorship elections. The display allowed prospective Nigerian voters to inspect and make corrections to the list to be used for the general elections. Nick Dazan, assistant director of public affairs of the INEC, told VOA the commission has gathered additional information from the votersâ list display that would help it produce a credible âdocumentâ to ensure a transparent, free and fair vote. âWe started this process on Monday, the 14^th, and it is going to end today. Now, at the end of the exercise, the commission will clean up the register, that is, (to) make sure that, after identifying all these issues, it comes up with a clean register, which it will now give to all the political parties on the 2^nd of March. By law, we are supposed to do this 30 days (prior) to the April 20^th general elections,â said Dazan. âYes, we are happy (about the turnout). As a matter of fact, even though the exercise was enthusiastically attended to by Nigerians because we were able to register not less than 66 million eligible registrants, we were not expecting that a similar number will turnout for the display.â Dazan said the electoral body is ârightâ on schedule with its preparations ahead of the elections. âAfter the display, which ends this evening, we will now begin to go into the elections proper. And, the first set of elections will be on April 2^nd, which will be the National Assembly elections; then, on the 9^th,we will have the presidential election; and then, on the 16^th of April we will have the governorship election,â said Dazan. âCampaigns are continuing at pace, the political parties are campaigning, they are canvassing for votes, and we are going to have this kind of campaigning until a day to these elections. Nigerians are excited about the (election) prospects and this excitement is underscored by the large number of Nigerians that came out to register, as we have seen.â Recently, the INEC chairman told VOA Nigerians should expect a âsignificantly improvedâ election that will be credible and meet international standards. Attahiru Jega said his commission has been doing extensive preparations and encouraging ordinary Nigerians to fully participate. âFirst, and foremost, we decided to make the elections free, fair and credible. We need to have a fresh voter register because of the key problems which we have identified with the existing voter register. So, weâve done a lot in terms of extensive operational and logistical preparations for the fresh voter registration exercise. And, we are confident that we will be able to have a very good voter registration exercise.â .