23 officials involved in fake voter registration to be sanctioned by INEC
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said it has identified 23 voter registration officers who would be facing disciplinary actions for carrying out fake voter registrations.
Mahmood Yakubu, INEC chairman, said this on Wednesday at the third quarterly meeting with political parties in Abuja.
Yakubu said the commission deployed thousands of its staff to carry out thorough Continuous Voter Registration (CVR), however, few failed to comply.
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Speaking at the meeting, the INEC chairman said after a rigorous clean-up of the data using the automated biometric identification system (ABIS), 2,780,756 (22.6%) of the registrants were identified as ineligible and invalidated.
He said among those invalidated are double/multiple registrants, underaged persons and outrightly fake registrations that failed to meet the commission’s business rules.
The INEC chairman also noted that the commission would continue to protect the voters’ register hence the need to discipline erring staff.
He said, “The commission deployed thousands of diligent staff for the CVR exercise and the vast majority of them discharged their duties conscientiously.”
“Unfortunately, a few of them did not. The fictitious registrations were carried out by some of our registration officers involved in the field exercise and could easily be traced.
“Each registration machine is operated using an access code tied to a dedicated e-mail assigned to a staff. There is therefore an audit trail that gives the total number of persons registered by each official involved in the registration exercise. In some cases, some of them made as many as 40 attempts or more to register one fake voter.
“As a result, the commission has so far identified 23 registration officers involved in this unethical conduct and disciplinary action has commenced. We shall continue to protect the integrity of our voters’ registers.
“It is pivotal to credible elections. It is also a national asset and easily the largest database of citizens in Africa and one of the largest in the world.”
Yakubu added that soon, the commission would notify Nigerians of the detailed plan to ensure seamless collections of the Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs), noting that the commission is working hard to ensure the completion of printing of the remaining PVCs for new voters.
“The commission is also working hard to ensure the completion of printing of remaining PVCs for new voters as well as those that applied to transfer or the replacement of their lost or damaged cards.
“In the coming days, we will also inform Nigerians of the detailed plan to ensure a seamless collection of the PVCs. We are aware that Nigerians expect an improvement in the procedure for PVC collection.
“Since the end of the CVR in July this year, we have been working to ensure that citizens have a pleasant experience when they come to collect their cards.”
Following the suspension of continuous voter registration (CVR) on July 31, INEC put the total number of completed registrations at 12,298,944.
