The Independent National Electoral Commission has shelved plans to clean up the voter register, pushing any fresh revalidation beyond the 2027 polls. Chairman Mahmood Yakubu told reporters the commission will instead rely on the existing register for the next national ballot.
The decision marks a departure from previous cycles when INEC conducted periodic exercises to weed out multiple registrations and deceased voters. Officials gave no technical or budgetary reasons for the delay, only confirming that no fresh validation will occur before citizens elect a new president and lawmakers.
Critics warn the move could leave millions of ghost names on the roll, complicating turnout projections and fueling disputes over inflated figures in tightly contested zones. The commission has yet to announce alternative safeguards or a timeline for when the cleanup might eventually begin.
Mahmood Yakubu's quiet announcement that INEC will march into 2027 with an unscrubbed voter register is a gift to every incumbent who knows that bloated rolls make rigging arithmetic easier. The commission has essentially surrendered its most powerful pre-election tool while pretending nothing has changed.
Previous revalidation exercises, though imperfect, deleted over two million duplicate or dead entries before the 2019 ballot. Skipping the process now means polling units will again contend with names of voters who died during the Covid-19 era and the banditry waves that have swept Zamfara, Kaduna and parts of the North-East. Politicians who bank on padding numbers in remote wards where election-day oversight is weakest are already celebrating.
For ordinary Nigerians, the fallout is simple: longer queues, slower counting and a higher chance that final tallies will not match the number of real voters who showed up. Women in Kogi and Rivers who travel long distances to vote will waste hours while INEC staff thumb through pages of registrants who no longer exist. Youth corpers drafted as ad-hoc officials will face extra pressure from party agents brandishing printed voter slips for the departed.
This is part of a pattern. Since 2011, each election cycle has seen INEC promise technology-driven reforms, only to retreat when procurement timelines slip or the presidency balks at funding requests. By shelving revalidation without public explanation, Yakubu signals that the commission's independence stops where administrative inconvenience begins.
