By Disun Amosun
The House of Representatives yesterday mandated the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to clean up its electronic system of dead and fictitious registered voters.
This followed a motion brought under matter of Urgent Public Importance sponsored by Rep Leke Abejide.
In presenting the motion at plenary, Abejide noted that such an ambiguous voter register serving as base for election purposes leaves room for manipulation of the electoral process as it is full of millions of names of people long dead and out rightly fictitious.
According to the Kogi State lawmaker, in the last General Election, it was glaring and crystal clear that people that were long dead had their names still displayed in the voters’ register.
“Even my own deceased father who passed on long ago still has his name displayed on the Board”, he said.
He further noted that apart from dead names on the voters register, it became glaring that INEC had abandoned its mandatory periodic update of the register, making it open for manipulation for people who intentionally involve themselves in multiple voter registration with intention to circumvent the process.
He noted further that the clogged system had become so big that it is now taking the advent of Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) to tackle the problem of faceless individuals, so as to stop them from voting.
The House resolved that INEC should conduct vigorous public enlightenment for all Nigerians for necessary negative effects on the electoral system.
“That INEC should develop a mechanism or software Application where families who lost their loved ones can report the demise of a particular PVC number so that it can be duly deleted from INEC register, Polling unit, and Ward. That whoever does not vote in two election cycles back to back be deleted from INEC register as non-existing human beings”, he said.
It also mandated the House Committee on Electoral Matters to ensure compliance.
The Motion was amended to read that INEC should include voter verification during continuous voter registration to identify those on the register who are still alive as well as fish out those with fake registration.
