Yiaga Africa has faulted the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over the credibility of its voter register, insisting that the number of questionable records is higher than the 1.5 million irregularities recently identified by the electoral body.
The organisation’s Executive Director, Samson Itodo, made this known on Thursday during an interview on ARISE TV, where he questioned INEC’s claim that it had addressed the identified irregularities ahead of the 2027 general elections.
INEC’s spokesperson, Lawrence Bayode, had earlier disclosed during an interview on Channels TV that some registration officials abused their access to the commission’s registration platform, resulting in 1,545,052 irregular entries in the national voter database.
Reacting, Itodo said Yiaga Africa’s previous assessments of the register had uncovered several anomalies, including duplicate registrations, names of deceased persons, multiple registrations, underage voters and other discrepancies.
He explained that the organisation began examining the voter register in 2018, starting with Edo and Bayelsa states, adding that the problems identified during those exercises showed that the scale of irregularities could be greater than the figure announced by INEC.
According to him, although INEC has acknowledged some of the problems, the registers released by the commission over the years have not fully reflected the extent of the discrepancies.
Itodo also questioned the timing of INEC’s proposed voter revalidation exercise, arguing that it should have been conducted immediately after the 2023 general elections rather than so close to the 2027 polls.
He maintained that a comprehensive revalidation exercise would be more appropriate after the 2027 elections, given the limited time available before the next general election.
INEC Chairman, Joash Amupitan, had on Wednesday announced that more than 1.27 million of the 1.5 million questionable registrations identified by the commission had been confirmed invalid and removed from the register.
Amupitan also said the commission was working to sanitise the database ahead of the release of its final voter register scheduled for December 15.
However, Itodo said the commission’s clean-up exercise should be subjected to independent scrutiny to establish whether the identified irregularities had actually been addressed.
He noted that public confidence in the electoral process remained low, making an independent assessment necessary to reassure Nigerians about the credibility of the register.
The Yiaga Africa director added that stakeholders were advocating an independent audit or review of the voter database to verify INEC’s claims and determine the extent of the corrections made.
He said such a review would help address public concerns, stressing that whatever steps the commission had taken must be open to public scrutiny.