There is perhaps no greater threat to electoral integrity than an unreliable Voters’ Register. Before the first ballot is cast or the first result announced, the credibility of an election is already being determined by the document that establishes who is entitled to vote.
The Voters’ Register is the foundation of the electoral process. It defines the electorate, determines the numerical strength of constituencies and provides the basis for accreditation and voting. It is, fundamentally, the official record of a people’s democratic membership.
Yet, in Nigeria, its credibility remains a persistent source of anxiety.
The historical paradox: have we really progressed?
Nigeria has travelled a considerable distance from the largely manual registration arrangements of the 1950s to biometric registration, electronic databases and the deployment of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS).
The 1959 general election, conducted under the Electoral Commission of Nigeria (ECN), had approximately nine million registered voters. Subsequent elections in 1964/65, 1979, 1983 and 1993 exposed different administrative and political challenges associated with voter registration.
4th Republic
The Fourth Republic introduced more sophisticated systems, including permanent voter cards, biometric identification and mechanisms for detecting duplicate registrations. Yet technological advancement has not necessarily translated into greater electoral credibility.
A bigger register is not automatically a better register. A digital register is not necessarily reliable, and biometric technology is not beyond manipulation. Consider the fluctuations in registration figures: 73.5 million in 2011, 67.4 million in 2015 and approximately 84 million in 2019. Such changes do not establish manipulation, since legitimate deletions and corrections occur.
The real test is fidelity: whether the names represent living, eligible citizens entitled to vote, or whether they are mere AI-generated entities.
INEC and the collapse of public confidence
An electoral commission’s credibility rests not merely on constitutional independence but on demonstrable impartiality, competence and transparency. Constitutional independence in itself does not guarantee operational independence when the personnel saddled with responsibilities decide to go rogue on the system.
When public confidence in INEC declines, virtually every administrative decision becomes vulnerable to suspicion, from voter registration and PVC distribution to accreditation and results management.
This is the distinction between administrative validity and democratic legitimacy. The former concerns compliance with prescribed procedures; the latter concerns whether citizens believe those procedures have produced a trustworthy outcome.
The European Union Election Observation Mission’s final report on the 2023 elections identified shortcomings in electoral administration that undermined public confidence. It also recommended an independent external audit of the Voters’ Register, including physical data checks and an assessment of biometric data quality.
This is significant. Concerns about the credibility of Nigeria’s electoral database extend beyond opposition-party allegations.
The law is clear: why must the register be open to the people?
Section 19 of the Electoral Act provides for public display and scrutiny of the Voters’ Register.
INEC is required to designate a seven-day period, not later than 90 days before a general election, for displaying the register at Registration Areas and publishing it on its official website or another designated website.
The law also provides for claims and objections concerning improperly included or omitted names. Failure by an INEC official to display or publish the register constitutes an offence under Section 19(5).
Public inspection allows citizens to identify omissions, questionable entries and incorrect transfers. It also enables political parties, civil society organisations and election observers to scrutinise the database before election day.
This is democratic quality control, not an administrative favour.
A register that is inaccessible, inadequately publicised or concealed behind bureaucratic obstacles defeats the purpose of the law. INEC cannot be the sole custodian, examiner and final judge of its own database.
An INEC source disclosed to Vanguard that the display of the register at wards and online has tremendously helped the commission to identify duplications and other impurities in the register. According to the source, “hundreds of thousands of claims and objections have so far been received by the commission and more are still being expected. You will recall that when the present leadership of the commission took over, we wanted to carry out a revalidation exercise. That exercise would have helped to clean the register in a more seamless manner. But the public outcry against the revalidation forced the hands of commission to abandon the idea. Mind you, we have carried out three phases of continuous voter registration”
Vanguard also learnt that the commission is presently on a zonal review of the exercise and has committed to presenting a clean register by December 15, 2026.
The dangerous politics of padding the register
In a political environment where electoral strength is often measured numerically, the temptation to inflate registration figures is obvious. Padding may involve duplicate identities, ineligible persons, deceased registrants, fictitious entries or manipulated personal information.
Nigeria’s biometric system was designed partly to prevent such abuses. Fingerprints and facial recognition can help identify duplicate records, but their effectiveness depends on data quality, institutional oversight and the integrity of officials operating the system.
The register must therefore be protected against both external manipulation and insider misconduct through access controls, audit trails, independent verification and meaningful sanctions. That is what INEC claims it is doing.
The emergence of artificial intelligence introduces another troubling dimension.
Just last month, (October 2026), concerns emerged over suspected AI-generated photographs, duplicate records and questionable entries in Nigeria’s preliminary Voters’ Register. INEC acknowledged investigating the irregularities, while its Director of Information and Communication Technology, Lawrence Bayode, attributed some questionable records to alleged misconduct by registration officers with access to the platform. Meanwhile, INEC has refused to release the names of those officials, further poisoning an already polluted space.
AI can generate convincing synthetic facial images and identity-related material. However, a suspicious photograph does not automatically establish that a fictitious person has been registered. Each affected identity must be independently investigated.
INEC must explain how such records entered the database, their number, whether they have been removed and what safeguards have been introduced to prevent recurrence. A national electoral database cannot depend on the assumption that everyone with access to it will act honestly. It must be designed to detect dishonesty.
Pvc distribution: When registration does not translate into voting
Registration means little if citizens cannot exercise the rights it confers.
INEC’s figures for the 2023 general election showed that, of 93,469,008 registered voters, 87,209,007 had collected their PVCs as at February 5, 2023. More than six million registered voters had not collected their cards.
This raises questions about administrative inefficiency, notification, relocation and access to collection centres.
The disconnect between registration and participation is equally troubling. This discrepancy does not prove fraud.
This discrepancy does not prove fraud. Apathy, insecurity and logistical challenges also affect participation. Nevertheless, it reinforces the need for a register that accurately reflects the eligible electorate and a system that enables citizens to vote.
Other structural weaknesses
These are not peripheral administrative issues. A defective register also creates opportunities for electoral litigation, as candidates, parties, and voters may challenge questionable entries, omissions, and accreditation figures.
An unreliable register does not automatically invalidate an election, but it introduces uncertainty into every subsequent stage of the process.
What INEC must do to restore fidelity
INEC should commission an independent audit of the national register, examining duplicate identities, biometric inconsistencies, deceased registrants, underage entries, and questionable photographs.
It must enforce Section 19 of the Electoral Act, ensure meaningful public inspection, and provide appropriately protected, searchable polling-unit-level information.
It must remove verified death records, strengthen voter-transfer procedures, introduce stricter database access controls, and publish periodic explanations of additions, deletions, and corrections.
PVC collection must become more accessible, while officials responsible for deliberate manipulation must face meaningful accountability. Transparency must be an operational principle, not a public-relations exercise.
Democracy begins before the ballot is cast
Nigeria’s electoral credibility cannot be separated from the 1950s and today’s sophisticated biometric systems should have produced an electoral environment in which the identity and eligibility of voters are beyond reasonable suspicion.
That this remains a subject of national controversy is a sobering indictment of past electoral administrations.
In a democracy, the register belongs, in the fullest sense, to the Nigerian people whose voting rights it records. Nigeria does not necessarily need a bigger Voters’ Register. Ultimately, a free, fair, and credible election does not begin on election morning. It begins much earlier, with the painstaking work of establishing who is entitled to vote.
The integrity of the ballot is inseparable from the integrity of the register. Where the foundation is uncertain, the legitimacy of the electoral outcome will always remain vulnerable – as it has always been.
Vanguard
