TheCable

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says 2.7 million invalid voter registrations have been removed from its database.

The commission had said it was conducting a comprehensive clean-up of the registration data following the suspension of the continuous voter registration (CVR) exercise.

Speaking on Tuesday at the national endowment for democracy event in the United States, Mahmood Yakubu, INEC chairman, said the commission has completed the clean-up of the voter data.

“Many citizens seized the opportunity for the online pre-registration during the period of one year between June 2021 and June 2022. Similarly the physical registration continued simultaneously with the online registration for a period of one year including a one month extension in response to appeals by citizens,” he said.

“At the end of the exercise, 12,298,944 citizens completed their registration. This is more than the entire voter population in the republic of Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Cape Verde.

“We have completed the cleaning up of the data using the automated biometric identification system (ABIS) — those who registered twice, those who are underage, and those who had no reason to register as provided by law have been weeded out.

“This exercise has been completed a few days ago and we have 2.7 million invalid registrants that were weeded out. We’ll continue to take whatever step is necessary to protect the integrity of the register of voters because it is fundamental to the conduct of credible elections.”