Yiaga Africa has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to clean up Nigeria’s voter register, stating that it is overbloated.

Samson Itodo, the executive director of Yiaga Africa, mentioned this at a Policy Roundtable on improving the integrity of Nigeria’s voter register organised by Yiaga Africa with support from the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) on Thursday in Abuja.

Mr Itodo highlighted that Nigeria has the largest database of registered voters in Africa, and despite over 12 years of INEC undertaking several updates on the register, concerns persist about the credibility and accuracy of the voters’ register. 

These concerns include duplications, deceased voters, multiple registrants’ errors, and the inclusion of ineligible registrants on the voters’ register.

“Of particular concern to us and stakeholders is the continuous decline in voter turnout for elections, despite the high number of new registrants during voter registration, which raises concerns.

“We believe that the best way to address this problem is to facilitate conversations about how to improve the integrity of our voters’ register.

“Today, during this event, we will release our first discussion paper on this subject, concluding that Nigeria’s voters register is overbloated and is in dire need of cleanup,” he said.

Mr Itodo emphasised that the discussion would focus on how to clean up the voters register because the 93.4 million registered voters had not reflected the true state of things in the country.

“We believe that there is an opportunity to clean up this voters’ register, and we hope that following this, there will be a national movement around how to sustain the pressure to clean up the voters register. 

“This is because the foundation of any credible election is nothing but a credible, accurate, and authentic register of voters,” he said.

Prof. Okey Ibeanu, a former national commissioner of INEC, while presenting Yiaga Africa’s discussion paper on improving the integrity of Nigeria’s voter register, attributed the challenges with the register to the absence of a legal and policy framework for cleaning the register.

Mr Ibeanu added that politically motivated inflation of the register, weak compilation and auditing practices, data management, and poor interagency collaboration were part of the challenges of the register.

He said the paper recommended the creation of an interagency framework for the cleanup of the register, voters register should be effectively linked to census, civil registration, and other databases.

He said that INEC needed to commence a full online registration process, discontinue printing voter cards, and move the funds to voter registration, whereas voter cards should be issued as paper documents at the point of registration.

He said INEC should use identity documents such as international passports, national identity cards for voting, and the commission should consider an independent audit of the voter register using qualified experts.

Chris Okeke, governance advisor, Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), said the organisation was committed to a partnership with Nigerian stakeholders to strengthen Nigeria’s democratic institutions and processes.

“We believe in Nigeria and the strength of its people and the innovation of stakeholders here.

“From our perspective, we are keen to hear from stakeholders on the best way and the pathway forward for improving the integrity of Nigeria’s voters register.

“We believe that by stakeholders coming together to talk about the issues, to prefer solutions to the issues, we would get the buy-in of not just the citizens, but critical institutions in our democracy to move forward in this issue,” he said.

(NAN)”