The inclusion of deceased people on the current voter list has been discovered by the Independent National Electoral Commission, or INEC, leading to preparations for a statewide verification effort.
This was announced on Wednesday at the Commission’s first quarterly consultative meeting with Civil Society Organizations, or CSOs, by INEC Chairman Prof. Joash Amupitan.
Amupitan claims that the assessment was required 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.
“We found that, although there were over 2.9 million registered voters in Anambra State during the off-cycle elections in November, only roughly 600 of them cast ballots.”
This represents only 20% of all voters that are registered to vote. Thus, we chose to reexamine the registry and found that the names of notable Nigerian leaders who had passed away were still listed.
“We don’t expect the dead to come from the grave to vote, so that affects the integrity of the register and we have to do a cleanup.”
The commission claims that the verification procedure is necessary to clean up the database and restore public trust in the election process.
The chairman of INEC stated that the results have brought into doubt 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 public 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 verify records.
He went on to say that the cleanup work is a part of the Commission’s larger initiatives to increase electoral credibility and guarantee that only eligible Nigerians are registered to vote.
