Yiaga Africa has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) to clean up Nigeria’s voter register, saying it is over-bloated.
Samson Itodo, the Executive Director, Yiaga Africa, said this at a Policy Roundtable on Improving the Integrity of Nigeria’s Voter Register organised by Yiaga Africa with support from the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), on Thursday in Abuja.
Itodo said that Nigeria had the largest database of registered voters in Africa and for over 12 years, INEC had undertaken several updates on the register.
He, however, said that in spite of these efforts, the credibility and the accuracy of the voters’ register had been a major source of concern for a lot of stakeholders.
“We at Yaga Africa believe that these concerns are not misplaced because both civil society groups and citizens continue to identify duplications of deceased voters, multiple registrants’ errors and inclusion of ineligible registrants on the voters’ register.
“Of particular concern, us and to also stakeholders is that this continuous decline in voter turnout for elections, despite the high number of new registrants during voter registration actually calls for concern.
“We feel the best way to address this problem is to facilitate conversations about how to improve the integrity of our voters’ register.
“Today, in the course of this event, we will release our first discussion paper on this particular subject matter and our conclusion which aligns with the views and the public domain is that Nigeria’s voters register is over bloated and is in dire need of cleanup,” he said.
Itodo said that the discussion would be centred around how to clean up the voter register because the 93.4 million registered voters had not reflected the true state of things in the country.
“We believe that there is an opportunity to clean up this voters’ register and we hope that following this there will be a national movement around how to sustain the pressure to clean up the voters register.
“This was because the foundation of any credible election is nothing but a credible, accurate and authentic register of voters,” he said.
Prof. Okey Ibeanu, a former National Commissioner, INEC, while presenting Yiaga Africa’s discussion paper on improving the integrity of Nigeria’s voter register attributed the challenges with the register to the absence of a legal and policy framework for cleaning the register.
Ibeanu added that politically motivated inflation of the register, weak compilation and auditing practices, data management, and poor interagency collaboration were part of the challenges of the register.
He said the paper recommended the creation of an interagency framework for the cleanup of the register, voters register should be effectively linked to the census, civic registration and other databases.
He said that INEC needed to commence the full online registration process, discontinue the printing of voter cards and move the funds to voter registration whereas voter cards should be issued as paper documents at the point of registration.
He said INEC should use identity documents such as international passports, and national identity cards for voting and the commission should consider an independent audit of the voter register using qualified experts.
Chris Okeke, Governance Advisor, Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office(FCDO), said the organization was committed to partnership with Nigerian stakeholders to strengthen Nigeria’s democratic institutions and processes.
“We believe in Nigeria and the strength of its people and innovation of stakeholders here to do.
“From our perspective, we are keen to hear from stakeholders on the best way and the pathway forward for improving the integrity of Nigeria’s voter register.
“We believe that by stakeholders coming together, to talk about the issues, to prefer solutions to the issues, we would get the buy-in of not just the citizens, but critical institutions in our democracy to move forward in this issue,” he said.