2027: INEC to clean up voter register, release details of new political parties

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said it would conduct a thorough clean-up of the country’s register of voters to further sanitise and strengthen the register’s integrity.

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The INEC Chairman, Joash Amupitan, said this during the commission’s quarterly consultative meeting with Civil Society Organisations on Wednesday in Abuja.

Mr Amupitan, a professor, said that a credible register of voters remained the bedrock of free, fair and transparent elections, stressing “no electoral process can command public confidence without trust in the integrity of its voters’ register”.

He noted that Nigeria’s national register, first compiled ahead of the 2011 General Election, had since been continuously updated and deployed in the General Elections of 2011, 2015, 2019 and 2023, as well as in several off-cycle governorship and by-elections.

Mr Amupitan, who noted that the country’s voter register as at the 2023 general election stood at 93,469,008, said that the persistent challenges, however, remained.

According to him, the challenges include duplicate registrations, underage registrations, registrations by non-citizens, deceased voters, and incomplete or inaccurate records.

He added that such anomalies undermine public confidence in the electoral process.

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“Accordingly, the commission will be embarking on a nationwide Voter Revalidation Exercise ahead of the 2027 General Election.

“This is very important for us, because most of the time we talk about voters’ apathy.

“When we conducted the Anambra governorship elections, there were over 2.8 million registered voters.

“As much as we tried to mobilise, the total number of voters was less than 600,000, and that was about 20 per cent of the registered voters.

“So, the general outcry is, oh, voters did not turn up. But sometimes, when we’re looking at the register of voters, for example, in Anambra state, we discovered names of prominent politicians in Nigeria that have died; their names are still on the register.

“This, in a way, is an indictment of the register itself.

“So, we’re going to clean up and ensure that we don’t continue to expect dead people to come from their graves and come and vote on the day of the election.

“We don’t also expect their posts to come from such elections,” he said.

New political parties

Providing an update on the associations seeking registration as political parties, Mr Amupitan said that the commission would soon release the details of successful associations ahead of the 2027 general election.

The INEC chairman recalled that INEC received a total of 171 letters of intent from associations seeking registration as political parties.

He said that the associations were assessed in line with Section 222 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended), Section 79(1), (2) and (4) of the Electoral Act, 2022, as well as Clause 2 of the Commission’s Regulations and Guidelines for Political Parties, 2022.

He added that several of the associations were unable to fulfil the constitutional requirements, the requirements of the Electoral Act, 2022, and the Regulations and Guidelines for Political Parties.

“Let me assure you that the successful association(s) will soon be announced by the commission,” he said.

CVR

Speaking on the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration (CVR), Mr Amupitan said that the second phase of the exercise commenced on 5 January and would run until 17 April.

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He said that the entire CVR exercise was scheduled to span one year and would be concluded on 30 August.

“In the first phase of the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration exercise conducted from 18 August to 10 December, 2025, the commission registered a total of 2,782,589 eligible voters,” he said.

“We are encouraged by the strong public response to the exercise, which affirms the belief of Nigerians in the democratic process and in the efforts of the commission to ensure that every eligible citizen is afforded the opportunity to register and vote.

“For transparency purposes, data on completed online pre-registrations and physical registrations are published weekly on the commission’s website,” he said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that representatives of registered civil society organisations attended the meeting.

(NAN)