The credibility of Nigeria's voters’ register has come under intense scrutiny ahead of the 2027 general elections following revelations that the database contains the names of citizens who died up to 15 years ago.
The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Joash Amupitan, made the disclosure in Abuja on Wednesday during a meeting with the Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Abisoye Coker-Odusote.
To address the issue, Amupitan announced a strategic partnership with NIMC to progressively clean up the register ahead of next year's polls. INEC plans to leverage NIMC’s robust data architecture, which currently covers more than 136 million enrolled Nigerians. The integration will rely on the newly signed NIMC Act 2026, which establishes a framework for verified identity and stronger data integrity in Nigeria's electoral system.
According to the INEC chairman, anchoring the commission's newly introduced online voter registration platform on the National Identification Number (NIN) will allow for continuous auditing. This process is expected to eliminate duplicate entries, underage voters, and deceased individuals. Amupitan noted that a clean register will significantly reduce the financial waste of printing excess materials to accommodate discrepancies across its current pool of over 100 million entries, while also mitigating identity theft and voter impersonation.
The revelation has drawn widespread reactions from civil society, academics, and public affairs commentators who argue that a flawed register directly facilitates electoral fraud.
Dr. Samuel Adegboye, a university lecturer, commended the INEC chairman's transparency but urged the commission to extend the clean-up to "ghost voters"—non-existent names inserted into the system. He warned that corrupt officials often exploit these loopholes to inflate election results, especially given the high number of casualties recorded due to national insecurity over the past decade.
Public stakeholders have also highlighted the economic benefits of the verification exercise. Johnson Adewale, a retired civil servant, noted that eliminating dead voters would prevent millions of ballot papers from ending up in waste bins, ensuring logistics are tailored to actual living voters.
Similarly, political commentators and former local government officials have called for swift action rather than political rhetoric, emphasizing that a verified, cross-platform identity system is foundational to delivering a fair, transparent, and credible election in 2027. NIMC boss Coker-Odusote reaffirmed her agency's full commitment to supporting INEC in achieving this goal.
