The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said more invalid registrations will be deleted from the the voters register.
The commission’s chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, made this known in an interview with Daily Trust.
He disclosed that more registrations will be removed from its voters register after the initial one million that were deregistered.
He added that the deletion of the registration is due to various reasons that invalidate them.
“Now, regarding the 1 million we announced as invalid registration, the commission, after every registration, cleans up the data. In cleaning up the data, we remove those who are not eligible to be registered under the law – those who are below the age of 18, those who are not Nigerians, or those who have registered before. Nigerians are not allowed to register more than once, so we remove those who engaged in multiple registration. That was what we did. But that only covered from June 28, 2021 to January 14, 2022. Right now, we are cleaning up the data of new registrants from January 15, 2022 to July 31 when the exercise was suspended, until after the general elections
“There is going to be another number to be added to the 1.1million we already cleaned up.
“The law also requires that once we do so, we should throw the register open to Nigerians for claims and objections by citizens. The law specifically requires the commission to publish hard copies of the register in all the 8,809 wards nationwide, as well as 774 local government areas. Now, the idea is for citizens to help the INEC to further clean up of the register.
“We are about to complete the cleaning up of new registrants and add the data of eligible or valid ones to the existing register of 84million, then publish the entire register nationwide for citizens to help us clean it up further.”