INEC, NIMC Move To Purge Duplicate Voters Before 2027
Nigeria’s electoral umpire has opened a fresh front in its long running struggle to clean up a bloated and ageing voters’ register, announcing plans to lean on the country’s national identity database to strip out duplicate entries and tighten verification before the 2027 general election.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said on Wednesday it would deepen its collaboration with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to eliminate duplicate voter records and strengthen data verification. The commitment was made by the INEC Chairman, Prof. Joash Amupitan, SAN, while receiving the Director General of NIMC, Engr. Abisoye Coker-Odusote, and her management team on a courtesy visit to the INEC headquarters in Abuja.
The move rests on a simple arithmetic of scale. INEC’s register stood at 93,469,008 voters as at the 2023 general election, a roll first compiled in 2011 and never subjected to a comprehensive review. NIMC, by contrast, now holds a database of more than 136 million National Identification Numbers (NIN), a far larger and biometrically anchored pool that the electoral body intends to use as a reference point for continuous auditing. Amupitan said the commission would leverage that database to continuously audit and cleanse the national voter register.
“As we move from the era of technology into the era of artificial intelligence, it is imperative that we work together to establish the necessary safeguards and protocols to ensure the integrity, security and credibility of our data systems,” Prof. Amupitan said. He disclosed that INEC’s newly introduced online Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) platform already requires applicants to supply their NIN for identity verification, adding that closer integration between both agencies would simplify registration while enhancing the credibility of the process.
The register’s known defects have been openly acknowledged by the commission itself. Amupitan, who was appointed in November 2025, has repeatedly listed duplicate registrations, underage registrations, registration by non-citizens, the presence of deceased persons and incomplete or inaccurate records as the anomalies undermining public confidence. Those concerns drove the commission to announce a nationwide voter revalidation exercise ahead of 2027. An earlier attempt this year to review the register was suspended after opposition figures questioned the motive behind it, a reminder of how politically sensitive any adjustment to the roll remains.
The scale of the credibility problem is visible in turnout figures. Citing the Anambra governorship election conducted under his watch, Amupitan noted that of more than 2.8 million registered voters, fewer than 600,000 cast ballots, a turnout of roughly 20 percent. A register padded with ineligible or dead entries inflates the denominator against which participation is measured, deepening the perception of apathy even where genuine turnout may be higher.
The continuous registration drive is meanwhile expanding the roll further. INEC recorded 2,782,589 fresh registrations in the first phase of the current CVR exercise, conducted between 18 August and 10 December 2025, with a second phase that opened on 5 January 2026 and an overall exercise scheduled to close on 30 August 2026. The commission publishes weekly registration data on its website for transparency. Early results from off cycle polls show the mechanism at work. In Ekiti State, the register climbed from about 900,000 voters in 2023 to approximately 1,059,660 ahead of the 20 June 2026 governorship election, an addition of roughly 66,000 names, even as more than 2,000 entries were struck out after data cleaning exposed double registration.
For NIMC, the partnership arrives on the back of a decisive expansion of its legal authority. Engr. Coker-Odusote said the newly enacted National Identity Management Commission Act 2026, signed into law by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, on 26 June 2026, marked a historic transformation of the commission after nearly two decades of reforms. The law repeals the NIMC Act of 2007 and, in her words, elevates the commission from a mere custodian of Nigeria’s identity database to the nation’s foundational digital identity authority, making it the home of the country’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and Root Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), the digital trust framework for secure transactions and governance.
“NIMC is ready to support INEC in delivering free, fair and transparent elections because identity remains the foundation of effective governance and credible electoral processes,” she said. The Act reinforces the NIN as Nigeria’s foundational credential under a “One Person, One Identity” principle, a design intended precisely to defeat the multiple registrations that have long troubled the electoral roll.
The Director of Strategy and Programme Office at NIMC, Dr. Alba Nkoku, who presented highlights of the new Act, explained that the legislation repositions the commission from a traditional identity registration agency into Nigeria’s national digital trust anchor. He said the Act establishes the legal framework for digital public infrastructure, strengthens the country’s digital sovereignty, promotes secure digital transactions and introduces digital identity credentials beyond the conventional identity card system.
Responding, Prof. Amupitan described the new law as a landmark achievement that expands NIMC’s role beyond identity registration into a sovereign digital authority capable of transforming governance, commerce, land administration and other critical sectors. He commended Coker-Odusote for the progress recorded under her leadership, noting that NIMC had become a key driver of Nigeria’s digital transformation, and expressed optimism that the partnership would strengthen the country’s digital governance architecture and enhance public confidence in future elections.
The wider context sharpens the stakes. President Tinubu has directed NIMC to capture every Nigerian by the end of 2026, a target the commission is pursuing through front end enrolment partners under the World Bank supported Identification for Development (ID4D) programme. Coker-Odusote has said the country’s true population remains uncertain, with estimates ranging from 200 million to 250 million, which makes a complete and de-duplicated identity base central to both planning and electoral integrity. Persistent gaps in civil registration compound the challenge, with the National Population Commission having warned that millions of births and deaths still go unrecorded each year against about five million annual births, leaving the identity and voter systems perpetually chasing an incomplete picture of the population.
Whether database integration finally resolves the register’s decade long problems will depend on execution and on political consensus. The suspension of the earlier review exercise shows that technical cooperation between two federal agencies does not, on its own, settle the trust deficit among parties and voters. Both institutions have framed the collaboration as a safeguard rather than a purge, but with party primaries, the release of newly registered political associations and the 2027 timetable approaching, the credibility of the exercise will be tested in full public view.