The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has announced that as of December 2022, 7,746 deceased voters were removed from the national voter register across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Victoria Etta-Messi, the Director of Voter Education and Publicity, made this disclosure to our correspondent on Thursday.
“Seven thousand, seven hundred and forty-six deceased persons across the 36 states and the FCT were removed from the National Register of Voters as of December 2022,” she stated.
INEC explained that a thorough cleaning of the voter register is typically carried out before every general election.
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In its 2023 post-general election review in December 2024, the commission acknowledged challenges with purging the voter register, despite improvements in the voter registration process, which added 12,298,944 new registrants.
A major challenge highlighted by INEC was the difficulty in removing deceased voters due to gaps in official death records.
“Problems with official death records continue to make it very difficult for INEC to remove deceased registrants,” the commission noted.
INEC also identified the issue of double or multiple registrations, which was addressed by the deployment of the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS). This system flagged and removed 2,780,756 invalid registrations, representing 22.6% of all new registrants nationwide.
The commission further expressed concern about declining voter turnout, noting that the 2023 presidential and National Assembly elections recorded a turnout of just 27.5%, a decline from 35.6% in 2019.
Some stakeholders attributed this decline to an inflated voter register and called for more rigorous efforts to clean it up.
During the review, stakeholders recommended that INEC strengthen its collaboration with agencies such as the National Population Commission and the National Identity Management Commission to identify deceased voters. They also suggested suspending individuals who have not voted in the past three elections and requiring them to revalidate their registration.
