INEC reassures of credible elections supported by appropriate technology

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Thursday reassured Nigerians of commitment to credible elections supported by appropriate technology.

The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu at the third quarterly meeting with civil society organisations for the year 2022 at the INEC Conference Room, Abuja, on Thursday, emphasized that the 2023 General Election is exactly 120 days away. He told the audience that at a similar consultative meeting with political parties Wednesday, he reassured Nigerians of the commission’s commitment to credible elections supported by appropriate technology. He declared: “voters will be accredited by means of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS). There will be no incident form. Results will be transmitted to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal in real time on Election Day. “We are committed to ensuring that the 2023 General Election is transparent and credible, reflecting the will of the Nigerian people.”

The INEC chairman disclosed that since the last meeting on 11th May 2022, there have been several developments, notable among which are the Ekiti and Osun State Governorship elections, and the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise as provided by law.

Yakubu said that from the outset, the Commission appreciates the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). According to him, “we have achieved so much working together for electoral reform, citizens’ participation and inclusivity in the electoral process, voter education, campaign for peaceful elections., the advocacy against electoral malpractice such as vote buying and multi-stakeholder engagements on election technology and the management of logistics. Yet a lot of work still lies ahead.”

He said that after consultation with stakeholders, the CVR commenced with the online pre-registration on 28th June 2021 and continued for thirteen months until its suspension on 31st July 2022. He further said that during that period, the Commission gave Nigerians regular weekly update showing the progress of the exercise nationwide, including analysis of the distribution of voters by age, occupation, gender, and disability for our planning purposes and for public information.

The INEC chairman highlighted; “at the end of the exercise, 12,298,944 Nigerians successfully completed the registration as new voters.

“The Commission had repeatedly assured Nigerians that our process of cleaning up the register is robust. After a rigorous cleaning-up of the data using the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS), a total of 2,780,756 (22.6%) were identified as ineligible registrants and invalidated from the record, among them are double/multiple registrants, underaged persons and outrightly fake registrations that fail to meet our business rules. Consequently, the number of valid registrations (post-ABIS) is 9,518,188. Hard copies of the full details of the distribution of the new voters are included in your folders for this meeting. A copy has already been uploaded to the Commission’s website and social media platforms.

“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 a 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’ register. 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.

“The 9,518,188 new voters have been added to the existing register of 84,004,084 voters. The PRELIMINARY register of voters in Nigeria now stands at 93,522,272. It is preliminary because Section 19(1) and (2) of the Electoral Act 2022 requires the Commission to display the hard copies of the register of voters for each Registration Area (Ward) and Local Government Area (and simultaneously publish the entire register on the Commission’s website) for a period of two weeks for scrutiny, claims and objections by citizens not later than 90 days to a General Election.

“Accordingly, in the next few days, the Commission will print 9,352,228 pages of the register. The hard copy will be displayed for each of the 8,809 Registration Areas (Wards) and 774 Local Government Areas nationwide while the entire register will be published on our website for claims and objections as required by law. The display of the physical register will take place at the designated centers from Saturday 12th – Friday 25thNovember 2022. Further details, including the procedure for filing claims and objections, will be released by the Commission next week. I would like to appeal to all Nigerians to seize the opportunity of the display to scrutinize the list and help us to clean it up further so that the final register of voters for the 2023 General Election can be compiled and published.

“The Commission is also working hard to ensure the completion of printing of remaining PVCs for new voters as well as those that applied to transfer or the replacement of their lost or damaged cards. In the coming days, we will also inform Nigerians of the detailed plan to ensure a seamless collection of the PVCs. We are aware that Nigerians expect an improvement in the procedure for PVC collection. Since the end of the CVR in July this year, we have been working to ensure that citizens have a pleasant experience when they come to collect their cards, including collaboration with CSOs for a pilot exercise in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). We are exploring the possibility of scaling up the FCT pilot for nationwide application.”

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Yakubu noted that it is clear to the Commission that as the General Election approaches, there will be need for more frequent meetings with CSOs. “We hope that in spite of your busy schedules, you will continue to honour our invitation.

by law,” he said.