Former Director of Voter and Publicity Education at the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, has questioned how 1.5 million questionable voter records found in the commission’s register were allowed to exist.
Osaze-Uzzi, who spoke during an interview on Arise Television, said the discovery ought not to have happened, considering the measures INEC has put in place to prevent multiple voter registrations and other irregularities.
He explained that voter registration should be a straightforward process because the law clearly states the requirements for eligibility, including Nigerian citizenship and being at least 18 years old.
According to him, prospective voters must also appear physically for registration and biometric capture, making it difficult to understand how such a large number of questionable entries could have entered the register.
He said, “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.
“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.
“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.”
The former INEC director, however, said the commission had not provided sufficient details about the period covered by the exercise or how the questionable records were identified.
He noted that it remained unclear whether the exercise was limited to the Continuous Voter Registration, CVR, conducted last year or involved a broader review of the register dating back to the first registration exercise in 2011.
Osaze-Uzzi said INEC needed to explain how the questionable entries got into the register in the first place, despite its ongoing efforts to clean up the database.
He also identified the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, AFIS, as one of the tools that could help the commission detect individuals who registered more than once.
According to him, fingerprint verification across states and communities could expose people who deliberately or unknowingly completed multiple registrations.
He added that the use of artificial intelligence, AI, which INEC’s Director of Information and Communication Technology had reportedly acknowledged, was another factor that needed clarification.
Osaze-Uzzi maintained that although INEC had reportedly cleaned up about 1.2 million records, the central question remained how the questionable entries found their way into the voter register.
He stressed that the commission must provide further explanations before a proper assessment of the exercise can be made.