Former Director of Voter and Publicity Education at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, has questioned the existence of 1.5 million questionable voter records in the commission’s register.
He argued that although INEC had reportedly cleaned up about 1.2 million records, the situation should not have occurred in the first place.
It was reported that Osaze-Uzzi shared his reservations during an interview on Arise Television.
He explained that voter registration should be a straightforward process considering the measures INEC has put in place to prevent multiple voter registrations and other irregularities.
According to him, prospective voters must also appear physically for registration and biometric capture, making it difficult to understand how such a large number of questionable entries could have entered the register.
He said, “The work ordinarily ought to be easier for the commission. The law is quite clear about who is entitled to be on the register: you’re a Nigerian citizen, you’re 18 years and above, and then you go there, and you register. It’s as simple as that.
“You must turn up physically for the registration. So it should be a straightforward, simple process. But Nigeria, being what it is, the simpler it is, the more complex things, issues, and challenges arise from those things.
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“I don’t know how up to 1.5 million entries can be made in the register. You’ve heard of AI. You’ve heard of multiple registrants. That ought not to be with things that have been put in place by the commission.”
The former INEC director, however, said the commission had not provided sufficient details about the period covered by the exercise or how the questionable records were identified.
Osaze-Uzzi said INEC needed to explain how the questionable entries got into the register in the first place, despite its ongoing efforts to clean up the database.
He also identified the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) as one of the tools that could help the commission detect individuals who registered more than once.
According to him, fingerprint verification across states and communities could expose people who deliberately or unknowingly completed multiple registrations.
He added that the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which INEC’s Director of Information and Communication Technology had reportedly acknowledged, was another factor that needed clarification.
