The Independent National Electoral Commission has struck 1,609,553 names from the national voters register, a clean-up it says is meant to strengthen the credibility of the list that will be used for the 2027 general election.
According to the commission’s chairman, Professor Joash Amupitan, the purge covers 1,608,660 confirmed invalid registrations and 873 verified records of deceased voters. He told a press conference in Abuja that the anomalies were uncovered through a technical audit powered by the Automated Biometric Identification System, which flagged unusual registration patterns, substituted photographs and fraudulent multiple registrations.
The audit also turned the spotlight inward. Amupitan said 54 members of staff across 10 states were found to have deliberately bypassed standard procedures, in some cases exploiting special provisions meant for vulnerable citizens such as persons with disabilities. The commission says disciplinary measures and possible prosecutions have begun against those involved.
The exercise follows weeks of public scrutiny after the preliminary register was displayed nationwide between 9 and 15 October for claims and objections. Complaints about irregularities on that list pushed the commission to act, and Amupitan framed its response as evidence-led, pairing completed corrective action with tighter preventive controls.
The numbers behind the register help explain the stakes. At the 2023 general election the roll stood at 93,469,008 voters, already the largest in Africa, yet fewer than 25 million valid votes were counted. A year-long Continuous Voter Registration exercise across three phases then added more than 10 million fresh applicants, lifting the register beyond 103 million before the latest deletions.
Register clean-ups are not new to the commission. Ahead of 2023, under the previous leadership, about 2.7 million ineligible entries were struck from that cycle’s fresh registrations and a further 53,264 names removed after public objections. The recurrence of invalid and duplicate records points to a deeper problem, and the commission has acknowledged that entries carried over from 2011 to 2023 still contain legacy duplications that will be expunged after verification.
One figure stands out. Although Amupitan had warned earlier in the year that the names of many dead Nigerians remained on the roll, only 873 deceased records were confirmed in this round, against more than 1.6 million invalid registrations. That gap suggests the bulk of the problem lies in how people were registered rather than in a failure to remove the dead, leaving the harder task of reconciling the register with death records still outstanding.
The chairman also addressed the wait for Permanent Voter Cards. Cards from the first two phases and transfers are being distributed at local government offices, while those from the third and final phase, produced outside the country, are due to reach the states within a week. From 1 December, Amupitan said, collection will move back to the registration areas closer to voters, and he appealed to third-phase registrants for patience.
On the legal disputes trailing the race, including the suit by Atiku Abubakar and the African Democratic Congress challenging President Bola Tinubu’s eligibility, the commission said it acts only on authenticated court judgments and not on social media reports, adding that it had yet to receive a certified true copy of any ruling. It said safeguards such as compulsory in-person accreditation through the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, using fingerprints or facial recognition, would remain in force. Whether the clean-up restores public confidence will depend on how thoroughly the remaining legacy records are resolved before the final register is published and the campaign proper begins.