ADC questions INEC voter registration figures, demands forensic audit

The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has raised concerns over the “statistically implausible” figures released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in its first-week report on continuous voter registration (CVR).

On Monday, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said more than 1.3 million Nigerians completed their online voter pre-registration within just one week of opening the exercise.

Sam Olumekun, INEC’s national commissioner and chairman of the information and voter education committee, said the figure stood at 1,379,342 as of August 24.

But the ADC said the numbers from Osun state alone defy both historical patterns and demographic realities, with nearly 400,000 new registrations reportedly completed in just seven days.

A statement on Thursday by Bolaji Abdullahi, ADC national publicity secretary, said the figures, if left unchecked, could undermine confidence in the electoral process.

According to INEC’s report, Osun state recorded 393,269 pre-registrations in one week.

Abdullahi said the figure was higher than the 275,815 new voters the state added between 2019 and 2023.

He said even at the peak of political mobilisation in 2022, Osun had never produced more than 823,124 votes cast in the governorship election.

“Now, by some miracle, nearly 20 percent of all eligible adults in the state have rushed to register. This is not just unusual, it is statistically implausible,” Abdullahi said.

The ADC spokesperson also noted that the south-west accounted for 67 percent of all pre-registrations nationwide, with Osun, Lagos, and Ogun making up 54.2 percent of the total.

Abdullahi said the entire south-east recorded just 1,998 pre-registrations, while five states — Ebonyi, Imo, Enugu, Abia, and Adamawa — combined barely recorded 4,153.

“These fantastic figures suggest either another technical ‘glitch’ in INEC’s digital registration system, or a more troubling possibility of deliberate manipulation of data to lay the ground for a more sinister agenda in the coming elections,” he said.

“The voter register is the foundation upon which the entire electoral process rests. If the foundation is compromised, it brings the integrity of the elections into question.”

The ADC called on INEC to conduct and publish a full forensic audit of the pre-registration data, including a state-by-state breakdown of both physical and online registrations.

The party also urged INEC to disclose server logs, bandwidth distribution, and regional access reports for the registration portal.

The ADC asked opposition parties to jointly demand clarity from INEC, while calling on election monitoring groups, fact-checking organisations, and legal advocacy bodies to interrogate the numbers.

The party further invited the United Nations, the African Union, ECOWAS, and Nigeria’s allies to take an early interest in the development.

“The credibility of our democracy cannot be left to chance. Silence in the face of these anomalies would amount to complicity,” Abdullahi said.