INEC Completes Clean-up Of Voter Data – Removes 2.7m Double Registrants

Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said 2.7 million invalid voter registrations have been removed from its database.

Gatekeepers News reports that INEC had said it was conducting a comprehensive clean-up of the registration data following the suspension of the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise.

The INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, while speaking at the National Endowment for democracy event in the United States on Tuesday, said the commission has completed the clean-up of the voter data.

Yakubu said, “Many citizens seized the opportunity for the online pre-registration during the period of one year between June 2021 and June 2022. Similarly, the physical registration continued simultaneously with the online registration for a period of one year including a one-month extension in response to appeals by citizens.

“At the end of the exercise, 12,298,944 citizens completed their registration. This is more than the entire voter population in the republic of Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Cape Verde.

“We have completed the cleaning up of the data using the automated biometric identification system (ABIS) — those who registered twice, those who are underage, and those who had no reason to register as provided by law have been weeded out.”

He added that “This exercise has been completed a few days ago and we have 2.7 million invalid registrants that were weeded out. We’ll continue to take whatever step is necessary to protect the integrity of the register of voters because it is fundamental to the conduct of credible elections.”