Nigeria and India have many things in common. The recently released world population index lists both countries among the top 10 most populous in the world.
Earlier this year, India overtook Nigeria as the poverty capital of the world. Nigeria held the position in 2018, with about 87 million people in extreme poverty.
Both countries also share similarities in terms of messy electoral registers (at least going by the 2013 records of India).
In 2013, The Times of India reported the mess that India’s voter registration was. According to the report, the country recorded many firsts in that registration exercise.
One of the indications that all was not well with the Asian country’s electoral register was the finding that the register had on it people that were not yet born and those too old to be alive, including a 4,818-year-old man.
That’s not all. The ages of at least 39 people on the register were recorded as 0 while 177 people were listed as 200 years old on the Election Commission list of voters in the south-western state of Karnataka, ‘The Times of India’ reported.
As if those were not ridiculous enough, it was also reported that in 10,000 cases, the age difference between parent and child was less than 13 years, just as households were also extensive, if the list was anything to go by, with one house having 452 voters and another 347.
The situation with India’s election register is similar to what has been the case with Nigeria’s for a very long time.
Over the years, the country’s electoral body has been unable to come up with a voter register that meets the standard of acceptance by all Nigerians and stakeholders in the electoral process.
Every election cycle, the issue of the credibility of the voters’ register becomes a cause of concern for which people express fears about the credibility of the election itself.
In the build up to the 2017 general election, after the display of the voters register by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), it was found that the register in Ondo State had names such as famed American boxers, Muhammed Ali and Mike Tyson, and American musician, the late Michael Jackson, among others.
With the 2023 general elections less than 100 days away, the commission published the voters register online, in line with Section 19 of the Electoral Act 2022, which mandates it to publish same not later than 90 days to a general election for a period not less than seven days. The section also mandates the commission to entertain claims and objections in relation to names omitted or included in the register or any necessary correction.
The display of the register has generated hue and cry, with not a few Nigerians accusing INEC of not being alive to its responsibility of ensuring a credible voter registration in spite the different levels of technology available to it.
In the register, cases of double and multiple registrations have been detected in addition to many other irregularities such as some pictures of the registrants appearing younger than the ages stated.
A heavily criticised INEC has in its defence said that it published the voters’ register to allow Nigerians the opportunity to pick out ineligible and underage voters, saying the act is helping the commission to improve transparency, even as it urged Nigerians to continue to report these persons on the website.
Even though INEC is only fulfilling a requirement as provided for in the Electoral Act 2022, it says “the full display of all registrants speaks to the Commission’s commitment to transparency. The fact that these likely ineligible registrants are being identified means that the objectives of the display for claims and objections are being met.”
It is disturbing that these irregularities still exist in the voter register despite assurances by INEC that it had put its house in order and had been carrying out a weeding of same.
In September, INEC told Nigerians that it had detected and invalidated a lot of double, multiple and ineligible registrants, including “entries that failed to meet the commission’s business rules.”
In October, the commission also revealed that it had removed 2.7 million names from the register for double registration.
The big question then is how these issues persist despite all the work INEC claims to be doing.
The culpability of some staff of the commission in the registration of ineligible persons is another matter that should be looked into and seriously too. This is very important because as we are made to believe by INEC, the biometric software accepts the finger prints of a person only once and should trigger an alarm if a person attempts to register twice, even if they use different names.
How then do we have photos of the same person with different names in the register? How did those over 2.7 million registrations go through undetected? What role did staff of INEC play in this either from the front or back end of the system?
Officials of the commission who superintended over the irregularities as identified should be investigated and disciplined accordingly.
The commission must note that a credible register is at the heart of electoral integrity and must do everything possible to clean up the register to acceptable standards before the Election Day.
Anything short of this and the election would be deemed to have been compromised even before the poll.
