INEC under scrutiny as ex-Director questions 1.5m suspicious voter records

Former Director of Voter and Publicity Education at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, has questioned how as many as 1.5 million questionable entries found in the commission’s voter register escaped its existing verification mechanisms, raising concerns about the effectiveness of the electoral body’s database management and safeguards against registration irregularities.

Osaze-Uzzi said the discovery was difficult to reconcile with the technological and administrative measures INEC had introduced over the years to prevent multiple voter registrations and ensure the credibility of the national register.

Speaking during an interview on Arise Television, the former electoral official argued that voter registration should be a relatively straightforward exercise because the eligibility requirements are clearly stipulated by law.

He explained that only Nigerian citizens who have attained the age of 18 are qualified to register, adding that prospective voters are required to appear physically for registration and biometric data capture.

According to him, these requirements, alongside the commission’s technological infrastructure, should make it difficult for ineligible individuals and multiple registrants to find their way into the database.

“The work ordinarily ought to be easier for the commission. The law is quite clear about who is entitled to be on the register: you’re a Nigerian citizen, you’re 18 years and above, and then you go there, and you register. It’s as simple as that,” he said.

He added that the physical appearance requirement should provide an additional layer of protection against electoral registration abuses.

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“You must turn up physically for the registration. So it should be a straightforward, simple process. But Nigeria, being what it is, the simpler it is, the more complex things, issues, and challenges arise from those things,” he stated.

Expressing concern over the scale of the questionable entries, Osaze-Uzzi said the commission needed to explain how such records were admitted into its database despite the safeguards already in place.

“I don’t know how up to 1.5 million entries can be made in the register. You’ve heard of AI. You’ve heard of multiple registrants. That ought not to be with things that have been put in place by the commission,” he said.

Unclear Scope of INEC’s Voter Register Cleanup

The former INEC director also faulted what he described as insufficient information about the scope and methodology of the exercise that uncovered the questionable records.

He said the commission had yet to provide adequate clarification on whether the review focused exclusively on the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise conducted last year or covered the entire national voter database accumulated since the first registration exercise in 2011.

According to him, understanding the period covered by the audit is essential to determining the nature, source and extent of the irregularities.

He maintained that INEC must go beyond announcing the discovery and removal of questionable records to explain how they entered the register in the first place.

The former director’s concerns come amid growing public scrutiny of the integrity of Nigeria’s voter database as political parties and electoral stakeholders prepare for the 2027 general election.

The credibility of the register remains a critical component of the electoral process because it determines the pool of eligible voters and provides the foundation for election planning, accreditation and the distribution of electoral materials.

AFIS, Artificial Intelligence Under Scrutiny

Osaze-Uzzi identified the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) as one of the technological tools available to INEC for detecting multiple registrations.

He explained that fingerprint verification across different states and communities could help identify individuals who had registered more than once, whether deliberately or inadvertently.

He also raised questions about the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the voter registration verification process, noting that INEC’s Director of Information and Communication Technology had reportedly acknowledged its use.

He suggested that the commission should provide details about how these technologies were deployed, the nature of the anomalies identified and the procedures used to determine which records were questionable.

The former director’s position is that the existence of sophisticated verification systems should ordinarily make large-scale multiple registrations and other irregularities easier to detect before they become part of the national database.

1.2 Million Records Reportedly Cleaned Up

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Osaze-Uzzi acknowledged reports that INEC had cleaned up approximately 1.2 million questionable records but insisted that the reported achievement did not address the fundamental questions surrounding the integrity of the register.

He argued that removing suspicious entries was only one part of the exercise, stressing that the commission also needed to establish how the records got into the system and why existing safeguards failed to prevent their inclusion.

The former official maintained that without a transparent explanation of the process, Nigerians would find it difficult to properly assess the effectiveness and reliability of the voter register cleanup.

He called for greater transparency from the electoral commission, particularly on the technologies deployed, the period covered by the verification exercise, the categories of irregularities discovered and the measures introduced to prevent a recurrence.

With the 2027 general election approaching, the controversy places renewed attention on INEC’s responsibility to maintain an accurate, credible and verifiable voter register.

The commission’s ability to explain the reported anomalies and demonstrate the effectiveness of its corrective measures will remain important to public confidence in the electoral process.