2023: INEC seeks list of dead politicians, public servants from NPC

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has urged the National Population Commission (NPC) to periodically avail it the data of deceased Nigerians to enhance the credibility of Nigeria’s register of voters, especially ahead of the 2023 elections.

INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, made the call on Friday in Abuja when he hosted the Chairman of NPC, Alhaji Isa Kwarra, who paid a courtesy visit at INEC headquarters.

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Yakubu said INEC’s inability to expunge dead Nigerians from the nation’s voter register was due to the absence of adequate data of dead people.

Nigerian registered voters currently stood at 84,004,084, amidst fears that the INEC register is grossly inaccurate due to the failure of the commission to clean up the register including removing dead persons from it.

INEC and the NPC in 2018 signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that would see the NPC providing information of dead voters to the electoral umpire but it seems not much has been achieved with the agreement.

Yakubu said the commission had been conducting a periodical cleaning of the voter register by removing ineligible persons or multiple registrants from it using a combination of technology.

He, however, regretted that technology cannot assist the commission to identify and remove dead persons from the register.

He said, “Perhaps you may wish to start by availing us with the list of prominent Nigerians who have passed on, civil and public servants compiled from the official records of Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies and other Nigerians from hospital and funeral records across the country.

“We appreciate that this is a herculean task but that is partly why we have an NPC. We are confident that NPC has the capacity to do so.

“This information is critical for INEC to enhance the credibility of the National Register of Voters.”

He recalled that officials of both agencies undertook a joint project to demarcate the boundaries of INEC’s Registration Areas (RAs)/Wards with NPC’s Enumeration Areas (EAs).

He said the idea of RA/EAD Project was to enable INEC easily delimit and periodically review electoral constituencies based on NPC’s figures whenever there is a new population census.