The chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Mahmoud Yakubu, has revealed that about 23 staff of the commission are facing disciplinary action for carrying out multiple registrations of fake voters during the Continuous Voter Registration, CVR, exercise.
Mr Mahmoud made the revelation on Thursday during a quarterly consultative meeting with the media at the commission headquarters in Abuja.
According to him, some of the staffers made as many as 40 attempts to register one fake voter.
He said: “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 email 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.”
While disclosing that about 12,298,944 voters successfully completed their registration, the chairman, however, observed that after a rigorous clean-up of the data using the Automated Biometric Identification System, ABIS, a total of 2,780,756 registrants were identified as ineligible and invalidated from the record.
According to him, the affected persons involved in double/multiple registrations and under-aged or outright fake registrations that fail to meet set requirement.
The electoral umpire further revealed that the number of valid registrations [post-ABIS] is 9,518,188, adding that the details have been uploaded on the Commission’s website and social media platforms.
Ruling out the possibility of using an incident form during the 2023 elections, Mr Yakubu insisted that the voters would only be accredited through the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS.
While noting that the deployment of technology has significantly improved the credibility of the election and electoral process, Mr Yakubu assured that the commission would continue to leverage technology so as to build confidence in the minds of Nigeria.
“With exactly 120 days to the 2023 General Election, we are clearly heading down the home stretch. At a similar consultative meeting with political parties yesterday, I reassured Nigerians of our commitment to credible elections supported by appropriate technology.
“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.
Mr Yakubu also said the commission is working hard to ensure the completion of printing of the remaining PVCs for new voters as well as those that applied for transfer or the replacement of their lost or damaged cards, to ensure a seamless collection of the PVCs.
