INEC Deletes 16m Names From Voters’ Register

Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Attahiru Jega, revealed that 16 million names of voters were cleaned out from the voters’ register following irregularities.

Speaking at a sensitisation workshop with a theme: “Nigeria 2015 Elections and Beyond: Stakeholders Conference on the Roles of the State and Non-State Actors in Mitigating Violence in Elections,” the INEC boss said over four million names were found to be double registrants while close to 12 million were under-age registrants and those with incomplete record.

He expressed regret that before the 2011 general elections, Nigeria never had a credible voters register with which credible polls could be conducted. He noted that a good register of voters is the key infrastructure on which the “electoral edifice has to rest.”

Jega said the commission had so far printed 54,341,610 Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs), 38,774,391 (71.35 percent) of which had been distributed, adding that a total of 15,567,219 cards were yet to be collected by their owners.