INEC clears out 7746 deceased persons from voter register
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has revealed that it removed 7,746 deceased voters from the national voter register across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory as of December 2022.
This was disclosed by the Director of Voter Education and Publicity, Victoria Etta-Messi, in a statement on Thursday.
“Seven thousand, seven hundred and forty-six deceased persons across the 36 states and the FCT were removed from the National Register of Voters as of December 2022,” Etta-Messi said.
INEC emphasised that cleaning the voter register is a routine process carried out before every general election to ensure accuracy and credibility. However, the commission highlighted challenges with the process during its 2023 post-general election review conducted in December 2024.
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According to INEC, one of the major obstacles to maintaining an up-to-date voter register is the lack of comprehensive official death records, which makes it difficult to identify and delist deceased individuals.
“Problems with official death records continue to make it very difficult for INEC to remove deceased registrants,” the commission noted.
Despite this, INEC has made strides in addressing issues such as double or multiple registrations. The Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) flagged and eliminated 2,780,756 cases of invalid registrations nationwide, representing 22.6 per cent of all new registrants.
The commission also raised concerns about the declining voter turnout in recent elections. The 2023 presidential and National Assembly elections recorded a turnout of just 27.5 per cent, a significant drop from the 35.6 per cent recorded in 2019.
Stakeholders have attributed this decline partly to an inflated voter register, stressing the need for more rigorous efforts to clean it up.
During the review, stakeholders recommended that INEC strengthen collaboration with agencies such as the National Population Commission (NPC) and the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to improve the identification and removal of deceased voters.
There were also suggestions to suspend individuals who have not voted in the past three elections and require them to revalidate their registration.
“One suggestion from this review was to strengthen collaboration with other agencies such as NIMC and NPC to identify deceased persons in the register and remove them. In addition, the commission could suspend individuals who have not voted in the past three elections from the register and request them to revalidate their registration,” INEC noted.
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