INEC Boss, Mahmood
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC and opposition political parties, yesterday, disagreed over alleged irregularities in the ongoing voters pre-registration exercise and figures coming out.According to the African Democratic Congress, ADC, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Labour Party, LP, and former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the new voters pre-registration figure showing massive listings in the South-West and specifically, Osun State, compared to other parts of the country, is worrisome and portends danger for the 2027 polls.
But INEC said it is normal, going by past records.
Meanwhile, forensic experts in the country have declared their readiness to help the commission address the disparities.
At press time, the ruling APC had yet to speak on the issue.
“There is nothing extraordinary about the online pre-registration data released by the Commission. Nothing can be further from the truth,” Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Mr. Rotimi Oyekanmi, said in a statement.
He explained that the commission launched the current Continuous Voter Registration, CVR, exercise on August 18, 2025, with online pre-registration, followed by in-person registration on August 25.
According to him, INEC released figures for the first week, showing a total of 1,379,342 online pre-registrants nationwide.
“Osun State led with 393,269 registrants, followed by Lagos State with 222,205, while the Federal Capital Territory was third with 107,682.
“Within the first 24 hours of launching the portal on June 28, 2021, 59,331 accounts were created. By the second week on July 21, 2021, Osun led with 154,893 pre-registrations.
“By the eighth week on August 23, 2021, Osun still led with 365,412. At the conclusion of the exercise in April 2022, Osun was ahead of all states with 708,782 registrations.
“If the party were proactive enough, a simple search of past records already in the public domain would have revealed these facts.
“Throughout the last CVR exercise, the commission displayed the preliminary register for claims and objections, while applying due diligence to ensure only eligible voters were included. After these processes, over 9.4 million new voters were added to the register, bringing the total to 93,469,008 for the 2023 general election.”
INEC maintained that it is not its responsibility to speculate on why one state records more registrants than others, but assured Nigerians of its commitment to transparency.
“Our duty as a commission, which we take seriously, is to ensure that only real persons who meet the criteria stipulated in the 1999 Constitution and the Electoral Act 2022 are allowed to register,” Oyekanmi stressed.
“The commission will continue to provide timely updates on the progress of the current CVR. We appeal to all well-meaning citizens to be circumspect in going public with information when authentic and verifiable data is readily available,” Oyekanmi said.
The ADC warned that the 2027 general elections could be compromised if the ‘statistically implausible’ voter registration figures released by the electoral umpire are not urgently addressed.
In a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, the party said the figures from Osun State and the South-West zone defied historical patterns and demographic realities, raising doubts about the credibility of the electoral process.
According to the ADC, INEC’s report showed that Osun State recorded 393,269 pre-registrations in just one week.
The party pointed out that this figure was higher than the 275,815 new voters recorded in the state over the entire four-year period between 2019 and 2023.
“Even at its peak of political mobilisation in 2022, Osun has never produced more than 823,124 votes cast in a governorship election. Now, by some miracle, nearly 20 percent of all eligible adults in the state have rushed to register. This is not just unusual; it is statistically implausible,” the statement read.
The ADC also noted that the South-West zone alone accounted for 848,359 pre-registrations, representing 67 per cent of the national total. By comparison, the South-East recorded just 1,998 pre-registrations, while five states: Ebonyi, Imo, Enugu, Abia and Adamawa, recorded a combined total of 4,153.
“These fantastic figures suggest either another technical glitch in INEC’s digital registration system, or a more troubling possibility of deliberate manipulation of data to prepare the ground for a sinister agenda in the coming elections. In either case, INEC has explanations to give,” Abdullahi said.
Warning that the voters’ register forms the foundation of elections, the ADC stressed that anomalies in the data could undermine public trust in the democratic process.
“We must be clear, the voters’ register is the foundation of the entire electoral process. If the foundation is compromised, it raises questions about the integrity of the elections. Nigerians still remember the bitter consequences of flawed voter rolls and technical glitches in past elections. Our democracy cannot withstand another one,” the party cautioned.
The ADC called on INEC to urgently conduct and publish a forensic audit of the first-week registration data, including a state-by-state breakdown of both physical and online registrations.
It also urged the commission to release server logs, bandwidth distribution records, and regional access reports for the registration portal.
The party further invited the international community to take an early interest in the developments and warned that ignoring such red flags could destabilise the country.
“Silence in the face of these anomalies will amount to complicity. History has shown that when questions about the voters’ register are left unanswered, the consequences go beyond politics; they touch on national stability itself. The time to act is now,” the party warned.
On its part, the LP expressed worry over yet-to-be-refuted claims that the INEC was already pandering to the whims of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, ahead of the 2027 elections.
According to the LP, there are concerns that the electoral management body is giving preference to states in regions they believe are strongholds of the ruling party in the ongoing voters’ registration exercise.
Interim National Publicity Secretary of the party, Tony Akeni, in a telephone chat with Vanguard, said: “We call on all Nigerians of goodwill in the civil society, the media, and political space to be vigilant. Reports reaching us indicate frightening attempts to rig the 2027 elections before Election Day.
“There are already concerns over the ongoing voter registration exercise. We implore Nigerians to be vigilant so that we don’t have a repeat of having ‘the late Michael Jackson, American boxer, Mike Tyson’ and the like appearing on our voters register.
“We also are yet to understand the plot to register inmates in our correctional facilities when law
abiding citizens are yet to be given their constitutionally guaranteed rights to register, vote and seek to be voted for.”
In like manner, the PDP expressed concerns over suspicious figures emerging from the ongoing continuous voters’ registration exercise, warning that weak institutions and political manipulation can undermine the credibility of Nigeria’s 2027 elections.
PDP Deputy National Legal Adviser, Mr. Okechukwu Osuoha, in a chat with Vanguard, described the sharp rise in new registrations in some states, particularly Osun, as an anomaly that reflects deep flaws in the country’s governance structures.
“In Nigeria, our institutions are not strong. That is why policies and programmes are often encumbered and manipulated. Those in power can influence electoral officers in their states to undermine the process. If our institutions were strong, like in the Western world, nobody within INEC would allow the system to be compromised,” he said.
Osuoha pointed out that while continuous voter registration is a normal exercise before elections, the numbers being reported in certain states defy logic.
“For instance, in one state, nearly 400,000 new registrations were recorded in a single week, while the combined total for several other states barely reached 4,500. This is a clear sign that something is wrong,” he said.
He added that these trends are not new, recalling past manipulations of both census figures and election results.
“When they do elections in Kano, you see them coming out with over two million votes, while in my state, we struggle to reach even 800,000. The same thing happens with population counts. This shows a lack of transparency and honesty in our system,” Osuoha told Vanguard. Vanguard
