The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said the alarm raised by African Democratic Congress (ADC) on the number of registrants in Osun State during the online registration exercise is unfounded, and said it was not the first time the state led in the its online registration.
INEC in a statement by Chief Press Secretary to the Chairman of the commission, Rotimi Oyekanmi, recalled that in June 2021 when the INEC launched its online pre-registration for the first time, the state led with 154,893 pre-registrations at the time.
“In the third week, 752,011 persons had pre-registered and Osun State was at the front with 232,880,” Oyekanmi stated.
According to him, Osun State maintained the lead up till eight weeks on August 23, 2021 with 365,412 out of 2,215,832 pre-registered voters.
“In the 11th week of the exercise on 13th September 2021, 2,953,094 individuals had pre-registered, with Osun State still in the lead with 402,619.
“By 18th April 2022, a total of 8,271,647 Nigerians had pre-registered, and Osun was ahead of all states with 708,782 registrations,” he said.
Oyekanmi stated that if ADC was proactive enough, “a simple search of past records already in the public domain would have revealed these facts.”
He noted that not all persons who pre-registered online would be automatically registered as everyone would be required to physically visit a designated centre to complete his or her registration process during which their biometrics were captured.
He added that INEC usually applied its robust Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) to detect and isolate double registrants.
Oyekanmi stated that while it is not in INEC’s place to develop conjectures on why any state has more registrants than others on its CVR portal, “our duty as a commission, which we take seriously, is to ensure that only real persons, who meet the criteria stipulated in the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Electoral Act 2022 are allowed to register.”
He appealed to Nigerians to be circumspect in going public with information based on sheer conjecture when they can rely on authentic and verifiable data available from INEC’s official repositories for both ongoing and historical record of our activities.
The Commission had disclosed in its data on online pre- registrations from August 18 to 24 , that a total of1,379,342 pre-registered, out of which Osun State led with 393,269, followed by Lagos State with 222,205 while Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory came third with 107,682 registrants.
But ADC said the figure in the South West was suspicious.
