The Electoral Commission (EC), at the end of the nationwide voters registration exercise, captured a total provisional number of 16,963,306 registrants onto the Voters Register.

Mrs Jean Mensa, the EC Chairperson, at the Ninth Edition of “Let The Citizen Know” briefing on Wednesday, explained that a total number 16,932,492 persons were registered at the end of the 36-day exercise while at the end of the two-day mop up 30,814 applicants had successfully registered.

Giving the regional breakdown, she said Greater Accra registered 3,509,805; Western recorded 1,185,315; Western North had 465,444; Central 1,566,061; Ashanti 3,013,856; Volta 929,322; and Oti 353,492.

The rest are Eastern 1,628,180; Bono 648,408; Ahafo 315,827; Bono East 592,015; Savannah 295,648; Northern 1,047,539; North East 288,393; Upper East 653,730; and Upper West 470,271.

She said the Commission’s statistics indicates that of the total registrants 8,775,609 representing 51.73 per cent were females while 8,187,698 representing 48.27 per cent were males.

The Upper East Region recorded the highest number of female registrants per population with 54.6 per cent whiles the Western Region had the highest number of male registrants per population with 51.2 per cent, she said.

Mrs Mensa said the data showed that 762,944 registrants, representing 4.5 per cent, were first-time voters who had attained 18 years.

“At the end of the exercise, 762,944 18-year-olds had registered as voters. To go a little deeper, 612,104 are 19-year-olds who also registered as voters,’’ she said.

“In a nutshell, the total number of 18 and 19-year olds who had registered at the end of the exercise amounted to 1,375,048. This figure represents 8.1 per cent of the total register.”

Mrs Mensa said out of the more than 16 million persons who registered at the end of the exercise, 60.09 per cent used the Ghana Card, 37.99 per cent registered through the Guarantor System, and 1.92 per cent registered with passports.

“The region with the highest number of persons who used the Ghana Card is the Oti Region where 79.1 per cent of the registered population presented the Ghana card followed by the Eastern Region where 78.5 per cent of applicants presented the Ghana card.”

“The Western North Region came third with 76.9 per cent of the registered population presenting Ghana cards”.

“Regarding the use of the Guarantors, the Bono East Region recorded the highest with 58.5 per cent registering through the guarantor system followed by the Bono and Ahafo regions. In both regions, 57.7 per cent of the registered population used the Guarantor system”.