The Executive Director of YIAGA Africa, Samson Itodo, has said that irregularities in the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, voter register are more extensive than the figures released by the electoral body.
Itodo disclosed that YIAGA Africa had commenced an audit of the voter register, during which it identified several irregularities, including duplicate entries, deceased persons, multiple registrations and underage voters.
He maintained that the figures published by INEC do not adequately reflect the actual scale of the problems affecting the register.
Speaking on Arise News, Itodo described the voter register as one of the most important documents in the electoral process, stressing that it determines who is eligible to participate in elections.
He explained that the law stipulates specific requirements for voter registration, including being at least 18 years old and meeting the citizenship and residency conditions.
He said, “You must be 18, you must be a Nigerian citizen and resident in Nigeria. And so, if you don’t fulfil those conditions, you are not allowed to be on the register to vote.
So the register is the foundation for any election because it determines who gets to vote at the end of the day.
“So if you have a compromised register, it then means that people who ought not to be determining leaders for us will be able to do that.”
Addressing concerns about the credibility of the register and INEC’s efforts to clean it up, Itodo said YIAGA Africa believes the irregularities go beyond the 2 million and 1.5 million figures previously mentioned by the electoral commission.
“Because we’ve started auditing the voters’ register, and Dr. Baysa Uzi knows very well that YIAGA Africa started auditing the voters’ register as far back as 2018, and we started with the Edo and Bayelsa voters’ registers, and we found that there are duplications, there are dead persons on the register, which INEC also admitted.
“There are also multiple registrants, right? And then there are underage registrants also. And there are certain errors that you find in the register,” he said.
The YIAGA Africa executive director added that the figures released by INEC, both recently and in the past, do not provide a complete picture of the irregularities.
However, he acknowledged that this does not automatically invalidate every aspect of the voter register.
According to him, the major challenge is the absence of a comprehensive nationwide audit that would establish the true extent of the problems.
Itodo argued that INEC should have commenced a nationwide voter register revalidation exercise shortly after the 2023 general elections but failed to do so.
He noted that the current electoral commission also considered conducting the exercise last year, but the timing was too close to the 2027 general elections.
He said, “The bigger question is: we needed to audit this register on a national scale. The challenge was that when INEC proposed a revalidation, it ought to have started this revalidation right after the 2023 elections. It didn’t conduct the revalidation. Then this new INEC last year wanted to conduct a revalidation.
“It was too close to the general election, and so I think that most of the issues that we are talking about can only be dealt with after the 2027 elections, when a revalidation exercise is conducted.”
Itodo further stressed that INEC’s removal of 1.5 million names from the voter register should not be accepted without independent verification, particularly amid public concerns about the credibility of the electoral process.
He said stakeholders were justified in demanding an independent audit or review to establish whether the identified irregularities had been properly addressed.
He added, “However, in the current dispensation, even if INEC has eliminated 1.5 million registered voters, in this climate of distrust, the public would want a situation where there is an independent review to really confirm that some of these irregularities have been resolved, and that’s why stakeholders are calling for an independent audit or an independent review of this current register.
“Because given the short timelines that we have, we just need to look at what’s the most feasible intervention, and I think that what INEC has done needs to be subjected to public scrutiny.”