The Independent National Electoral Commission says it has deleted 7,746 deceased voters from the national voter register in 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory(FCT) as of December 2022.
Victoria Etta-Messi, Director of Voter Education and Publicity, INEC, announced this to journalists on Thursday in Abuja.
“Seven thousand, seven hundred and forty-six decreased persons across the 36 states and the FCT were removed from the National Register of voters as of December 2022,” she said.
According to her, a thorough cleaning of the voter register is usually done before every general election.
In its 2023 post-general election review in December 2024, INEC highlighted challenges with cleaning up the voter register, despite improvements in the voter registration process that added 12,298,944 new registrants.
One major issue is the difficulty in removing deceased persons due to gaps in official death records.
“Problems with official death records continue to make it very difficult for INEC to remove deceased registrants,” she stated.
She said the commission also identified the problem of double or multiple registrations, which was addressed by deploying the Automated Biometric Identification System.
“This process flagged and removed 2,780,756 cases of invalid registrations, representing 22.6 per cent of all new registrants nationwide,” she said.
She said INEC further noted concerns about declining voter turnout. The 2023 presidential and National Assembly elections recorded a turnout of 27.5 percent, down from 35.6 per cent in 2019.
