A nationwide verification effort has been planned after the Independent National Electoral Commission, or INEC, discovered that deceased people were listed on the current voter registration.
This was revealed on Wednesday during the Commission’s first quarterly consultative meeting with Civil Society Organizations, or CSOs, by INEC Chairman Prof. Joash Amupitan.
After examining data from the November off-cycle governorship election in Anambra State, which showed a stark discrepancy between the number of registered voters and those who actually cast ballots, Amupitan said the review was required.
“We found that, although over 2.9 million people registered to vote in Anambra State during the off-cycle elections in November, only over 600 of them cast ballots.
This represents merely 20% of all voters who are registered to vote. We then made the decision to look through the record once more, and we found that the names of notable Nigerian politicians who had passed away were still there.
“We don’t expect the dead to come out of the grave to vote, so that affects the integrity of the register and we need to clean it up.”
The commission claims that the verification procedure is necessary to clean up the database and restore public trust in the voting process.
According to the head of INEC, the results have cast doubt on the validity of the record that is currently being used for national elections.
He emphasized that accurate and current voter registration is essential to holding legitimate elections, pointing out that the existence of names that are ineligible erodes trust in the democratic process.
Amupitan revealed that the intended verification process would concentrate on eliminating deceased people’s names, fixing data inaccuracies, and collaborating with pertinent government organizations to authenticate records.
He continued by saying that the cleanup work is a component of the Commission’s larger initiatives to enhance election credibility and guarantee that only eligible Nigerians are registered to vote.