Research and public policy experts, under the auspices of Nextier SPD, have charged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to maintain the integrity of its voters data bank, especially with regard to the voting population ahead of the 2023 general elections.
They pointed out that when INEC raises the alarm over the authenticity of its data and the possibility of infiltrators gaining access to its digital portal, naturally elicits doubt from the voting population, a development that also goes to impact electoral outcomes.
According to Nextier SPD, reliable census data is inevitably required to ensure a voter register’s integrity.
The group also noted that census details provide the needed control data for validating information provided by persons registering as new potential voters, as well as updating records on existing registered voters and providing information on those who have attained the age of franchise or even died.
The experts who comprise Dr Ben Nwosu an Associate Consultant at Nextier SPD and a Senior Research Fellow, the Institute for Development Studies, University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus, Senior Lecturer, Political Science Department, Nsukka Campus and Dr Ndu Nwokolo also a Managing Partner and Chief Executive at Nextier SPD and an Honorary Research Fellow School of Government and Society, University of Birmingham, UK, explained that a well-managed census data can circumvent some abuses of the electoral processes, such as underage registration and voting, the introduction of fictitious or foreign names into the register and over-registration of any constituency.
They argued that these forms of abuses of the electoral process are sources of political tension that could snowball into agitations.
To buttress their claims, the researchers said the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) recently alleged a plot by the ruling party to compromise the 2023 elections by manipulating the voters’ register by including fictitious names and inflating the population of selected constituencies to forge electoral results in the forthcoming presidential election.
But to clear such doubts INEC quickly responded by noting that it has not added any new registrants to the voters’ register since the end of the continuous voter registration on 31st July 2022.
INEC also noted that it is conducting a comprehensive automated clean-up of the voters’ register to delete all registrations that do not meet the inclusion criteria in the register based on the Electoral Act of 2022.
Nextier SPD said these concerns by CUPP and the response by INEC relate to electoral data integrity, largely determined by the existence of up-to-date demographic data based on dependable census figures.
It noted that regrettably, the census is usually not only highly politicised, but its figures are also equally contested. Hence, Nigeria’s existing census data cannot support the process of building dependable voters’ information.
They, therefore, recommended that challenges of poor census data for elections in Nigeria require that the authorities should consider how to address the questions related to the integrity of voters’ registers and proactively plan how to use census data for electoral and other national planning purposes by doing the following
“Investigate the allegations by CUPP and publish verifiable findings for the citizens to see. If the claims are valid, culprits who penetrated the security of the INEC information system and flooded it with false data should be punished.
“Also, reports of underage voting in the 2015 presidential elections, 2018 Kano local government elections and 2019 presidential elections should be made public, in addition to sanctions for those who enabled it.
“INEC must, in light of allegations of over-registration, clean up its voters’ register and urgently publish the final register for public scrutiny.
“NPC should introduce technologies that require biometric information in the next census to minimise any group’s inflation of census figures.
“The database emerging from this serves as a reference point for validating people’s claims about their biodata during voters’ registration,” Nextier stated.
