The completed registration of no fewer than 106,280 voters in Ekiti and Osun States have been declared invalid by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for flouting the guidelines stipulated for the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise.
In Ekiti State, a total of 40,234 new voters were registered out of which 17,640 were voided representing 43.9% of the completed registrations while in Osun State, 218,142 new registrations were completed, out of which 88,630 were invalidated, representing 40.6% of the total number of new voters.
INEC Chairman, who gave the statistics during a press conference at the Commission’s Headquarters, said the infraction happened in all the states of the Federation.
According to him, out of the 2,523,458 new registrations, 1,126,359, representing 44.6% were invalid, adding that the infraction which was uncovered while cleaning up the voter register, happened across the 36 states.
He said: “While the number of new registrants is very impressive and demonstrates the eagerness of Nigerians to vote in the forthcoming elections, the Commission has a duty to clean up the data to ensure that only eligible Nigerians are registered.
“As you are aware, the foundation for any credible election rests on the credibility of the Register of Voters. The introduction of the biometric registration of voters in 2011 has helped to sanitize the Register. You may recall that initially, 73,528,040 Nigerians were registered in 2011.
“Using the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), the Commission was able to remove 4,239,923 invalid registrations. Consequently, the Register of Voters for the 2015 General Election stood at 69,288,117 voters.
“Subsequently, some 432,173 new voters were added to the Register during the CVR exercises ahead of the off-cycle Governorship elections in five States (Bayelsa, Kogi, Edo, Ondo and Anambra) from late 2015 to early 2017, bringing the total number of registered voters in Nigeria to 69,720,350.”