Did INEC Truly Remove Over 1m Newly Registered Voters Ahead of 2023 Elections?
Recently, Nigeria’s (social) media space was awash with the news that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) delisted over one million "newly registered voters".
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Source: Twitter
The question is: Can INEC delist (remove) voters? Here is what really happened:
In June 2021, INEC began the continuous voter registration exercise (CVR).
To make the process easier, the commission launched a portal where Nigerians could register or request to update their voter information before they complete the process physically at designated centres.
The CVR exercise lasted from June 28, 2021, to January 14, 2022.
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After suspending the exercise, INEC announced that over 12 million people (12,298,944) completed their registration.
INEC's cleanup exercise
After registering over 12 million people, INEC moved on to the next process it termed the clean-up of the register of voters.
The clean-up is where the electoral body verifies the validity of the registrations by checking the data provided by the registrants.
During the process, registrations that are considered invalid are identified and then removed, or “delisted”, to use INEC’s term.
According to the commission, the clean-up is done using the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS).
After completing the clean-up process, INEC will publish the list of new valid voters.
Thereafter, the valid registrants will be added to the existing national register of voters before publishing the same nationwide for scrutiny, claims and objections by citizens as required by section 19 (1) of the Electoral Act 2022.
INEC CVR: Over I million voter registrations invalid
Regarding the June 28 2021, to January 14, 2022 CVR exercise, INEC in April said it has completed the cleanup process and discovered over one million invalid registrations.
Mahmood Yakubu, the commission's chairman, said out of the 2,523,458 Nigerians that completed their voter registration within that period, 1,126,359, representing about 45 percent, were found to be invalid and were delisted (removed).
What are the parameters for determining invalid registrations?
In a statement released on Monday, September 12, Festus Okoye, INEC National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, said several double, multiple and ineligible registrants were detected and invalidated.
He said the entries (registrations) that fail to meet the Commission's business rules were also delisted.
Simply put, the reasons why a registration will be labelled as invalid include:
Double/multiple registrations
This is a situation where an individual who has previously registered to vote does so again.
The commission invalidates and removes the newer registration(s) and leaves the already existing one.
Visibly underaged
Section 12(1) of the electoral act stipulates that a person shall be qualified to be registered as a voter upon attaining the age of 18 years.
So, underage registrants were also delisted.
Suspicious registrations
Okoye, according to TheCable, said suspicious registrations were also "targeted" during the cleanup.
This has to do with registered persons who decided to register again relying on the misinformation that their PVCs (issued before 2011) had expired or those who registered again because they lost their PVCs.
Why couldn't INEC identify double registrations at point of registration
Okoye in a TV interview said the commission has the capacity to identify double registrations at the point of registration.
However, it decided not to do so to speed up the process.
To answer the question asked in the early part of this piece, INEC did not delist or remove "newly registered voters."
What the commission was to delist some voter registrations because they didn't follow the rules.
INEC cannot delist or remove a valid voter from its register. It can, however, invalidate a registration that does not follow its rules, which is what it has done in this case.
Okoye said the Commission takes this responsibility seriously because a credible register is at the heart of electoral integrity.
INEC releases final list of candidates for presidential, National Assembly elections
Meanwhile, INEC on Tuesday evening, September 20, published the final list of candidates for Presidential, Senatorial and House of Representatives for the 2023 general elections.
In a statement sighted by Legit.ng, the commission said it approved the final list of candidates “pursuant to section 32(1) of the Electoral Act 2022 and item 8 of the timetable and schedule of activities for the 2023 general election”.
According to INEC, there are 18 presidential candidates for the 2023 general elections.
Source: Legit.ng
