Need For Transparency In Voter Registration

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) recently embarked on a nationwide Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise.

INEC’s online pre-registration portal, which is billed to last for a year, was launched on August 18, 2025, with in-person registration following on August 25.

Within the first week, 1,379,342 Nigerians had pre-registered online with Osun State recording the highest number of prospective voters at 393,269, followed by Lagos State with 222,205, and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) with 107,682.

The breakdown of the online pre-registrations shows that 661,846 (47.96 percent) are male and 717,856 (52.04 percent) are female.

Young people between the ages of 18 and 34 constitute the majority of the prospective voters with 860,286 (62.37 percent), while 374,534 (27.15 percent) are students and the figure for persons with disability is 27,089 (1.96 percent).

This newspaper recognises that voter registration is a critical aspect of the electoral process, which can determine the integrity of any election. This is even as the INEC encouraged all eligible voters to take advantage of the opportunity to ensure participation in the upcoming elections.

However, the registration figure as disclosed by INEC has continued to generate controversies and crisis across the nation with many Nigerians including opposition and civil society organisations,  describing the figures as an attempt to rig and manipulate 2027 elections ahead.

They described the situation as “a worrisome gap that raises serious questions about the transparency, credibility, and efficiency of the registration process.”

With 26 years of unbroken democracy in this fourth Republic, Nigeria’s electoral processes have been serially fraught with rigging, violence, ballot snatching, vote buying, use of under -age voters, falsification of election results by which losers become winners and winners become losers.

These odious fractures have been allowed to thrive and fester for too long, throwing up leaders, many of who were not elected by the people.

This newspaper recalls that after the 2023 general elections, the INEC chairman, Prof Mahmoud Yakubu said that the commission was helpless in prosecuting perpetrators of election violence and election offenders.

Just recently, even though it claimed there is no sanction for early election campaigns, the same INEC expressed concerns about early election campaigns by political parties, stating that the campaigns have undermined its ability to track campaign finance limits.

We have been canvassing for the establishment of an Electoral Offences Commission to take the “burden” of prosecuting electoral offenders off INEC. The Electoral Reform Committee headed by a former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Mohammed Uwais, had in 2007 recommended the establishment of a special prosecution body to be known as the Electoral Offences Commission.

According to the United Nations on Democracy and Human Rights, the values of freedom, respect for human rights and the principle of holding periodic and genuine elections by universal suffrage are essential elements of democracy.

Governments are chosen through regular, fair elections in which citizens have the right to vote freely and in turn, democracy provides an environment for the protection and effective realisation of human rights.

For us, the call for amendment to the 2022 Electoral Act has become strident and stronger. In addition to the single day voting system being canvassed by INEC, which if, passed into law, would significantly enhance electoral efficiency, reduce operational costs, and streamline governance cycles across the country, the mode of transmission of election results has become vital in elections.

Our sister African country, South Africa has demonstrated that it can be done with real time transmission of results online while we emphasise to INEC the need to phase out collation centres where we know that manipulations of results are carried out.

With less than a year and half to the 2027 general elections, there’s so much to do before the campaign kicks off in earnest towards the end of next year.

A well-worn cliche says that it’s only a fool that does the same thing repeatedly and expect to get a different result. We cannot continue in this same trajectory of rigged elections and expect credible leaders who would do well for the development of the nation.

In our opinion, election rigging has had far reaching consequences on the nation with bad leaders emerging  who display lack of empathy, accountability, integrity, and vision, characterised by poor communication, dishonesty, self-centredness, and the inability to make sound, decisive choices.

To correct this anomaly therefore, there’s a need to make the electoral system transparent and credible to ensure that only the choices of the people are actually elected into electable political offices- people with integrity, vision, wisdom and purpose- not those who try to buy their way into leadership position.