The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has stated that about 23 of its personnel tried to register some fake voters 40 times.
INEC National Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, disclosed this yesterday during the third quarterly meeting with political parties in Abuja.
The electoral body also stated that at least 93.5 million Nigerians are eligible to vote in the 2023 general election, adding that 12.29 million Nigerians successfully completed their registrations as new voters in the just concluded Continuous Voter Registration CVR.
INEC noted that not less than 2.78 million were identified and removed from the database as ineligible registrants through Automated Biometric Identification System, ABIS.
Yakubu said 23 of the commission’s registration officers have been identified for punishment for attempting to engage in multiple registration of voters.
The Inter-Party Advisory Council, IPAC, commended the INEC boss for his innovations to restore confidence in the electoral process.
See Also: INEC: Seven Million Voters Registrations Uncompleted
IPAC hailed the deployment of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, and the INEC Result Viewing IReV Portal in the elections recently conducted in some states of the country and for the 2023 general election.
Yakubu said, “The Commission deployed thousands of diligent staff for the CVR exercise and the vast majority of them discharged their duties conscientiously. Unfortunately, a few of them did not. The fictitious registrations were carried out by some of our Registration Officers involved in the field exercise and could easily be traced. Each registration machine is operated using an access code tied to a dedicated e-mail assigned to staff.
“There is therefore an audit trail that gives the total number of persons registered by each official involved in the registration exercise. In some cases, some of them made as many as 40 attempts or more to register one fake voter. As a result, the Commission has so far identified 23 Registration Officers involved in this unethical conduct and disciplinary action has commenced. We shall continue to protect the integrity of our voters’ registers. It is pivotal to credible elections. It is also a national asset and easily the largest database of citizens in Africa and one of the largest in the world.”
Source: Vanguard