The Independent National Electoral Commission has revealed that 7,746 deceased voters were expunged from the national voter register across all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory by December 2022.
This was disclosed by INEC’s Director of Voter Education and Publicity, Victoria Etta-Messi, during a conversation with The PUNCH 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,” she confirmed.
INEC emphasized that a comprehensive cleanup of the voter register is standard procedure before any general election.
However, in its post-2023 general election review conducted in December 2024, the commission acknowledged ongoing challenges in maintaining the integrity of the voter register, despite improvements in the registration process that saw 12,298,944 new voters added.
One significant challenge, as noted by INEC, is the difficulty of identifying and removing deceased individuals due to gaps in the availability of official death records.
“Problems with official death records continue to make it very difficult for INEC to remove deceased registrants,” the commission stated.
The issue of double or multiple registrations was another concern tackled by INEC, which employed the Automated Biometric Identification System to detect and eliminate 2,780,756 invalid registrations, representing 22.6% of all new applications nationwide.
Additionally, INEC flagged a worrying trend of declining voter turnout.
The 2023 presidential and National Assembly elections recorded only a 27.5% turnout, a drop from the 35.6% recorded in 2019.
Some stakeholders linked this decline partly to the presence of deceased individuals and outdated information in the voter register, urging INEC to intensify efforts to address the issue.
During the review, stakeholders proposed that INEC enhance partnerships with agencies like the National Population Commission and the National Identity Management Commission to identify and remove deceased voters more efficiently.
Suggestions also included suspending voters who have not participated in the last three elections, requiring 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 highlighted.
