INEC to publish Voter Register
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has decided to publish the authentic voter’s register in January 2023 ahead of the 2023 general election. This development comes weeks after suspicions were raised by concerned members of certain political parties about the involvement of some INEC staff in the inputting of false voter data into the register.
There was a big issue a few weeks ago when the Nigerian opposition parties under the aegis of the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) claimed that it had uncovered massive voter registration fraud and a plot to sack the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The coalition also displayed extracts of the national voter register which it claimed were part of at least 10 million fake registrations done by one of the political parties. But it did not disclose the name of the political party.
INEC did an investigation and found 1,126,359 records out of the 2, 523,458 fresh registrants that registered between June 28, 2021, and January 14, 2022, to be invalid and consequently delisted them. INEC also stated that it detected several double, multiple, and ineligible registrants and had consequently invalidated them, adding that these included entries failed to meet the commission’s business rules.
Anyway, thanks to the Electoral Act 2022, votes are now electronically transmitted. The new electoral also gave INEC the legal backing to deploy technology to enhance the credibility of the electoral process. This automatically allows them the freedom to deploy the use of the INEC Voter Enrollment Device (IVED), Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), and INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal.
In all of this, we can only just hope that the elections will be free and fair because the stability of this country hangs in the balance of the outcome of next year’s polls.
#STATEAFFAIRS is a segment that gives you a quick rundown of various political and state issues as they happen in the most simple, subtle language. In this edition, we are looking at INEC’s proposed date for the publication of the voter’s register.
