Jega: Elections Can’t Have Integrity with Faulty Register

Chuks Okocha in Abuja

A former national chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, yesterday, said the voter register was essential to any election as elections would not have any integrity, when the voter register was faulty
Also, INEC former national commissioner, Prof Okey Ibeanu, has called for the linkage of the voter register with National Population Commission (NPC).
Both spoke at a workshop organised by Yiaga Africa in Abuja.

According to Jega, in his paper titled: “Improving the Integrity of Nigeria’s Voter Register,” voter register was essential to any election in the world and there was no way that there could be credible election, when the register was faulty.

“We need to quite early start the processes of policy, legal and administrative reforms to improve the integrity of elections in Nigeria. And, as we strive to improve the integrity of elections, we must also give priority to finding ways and means of improving the integrity of the register of voters,” he said.
He explained that this was in contrasts with the practice in some other countries,where the register of voters was merely derived, extracted from the national civic/population registration database, and a few other countries in which all an eligible voter required was an acceptable means of identification, to be allowed to vote.

Jega explained that the condition and manner by which these exercises were done left much to be desired, essentially due to financial constraints, tight/limited time-frame for compiling and cleaning of the register, poorly trained staff, and the challenges and distribution/collection of the voter registration cards.
As a result, he said,  “the comprehensiveness of the compiled register of voters, as well as its integrity are quite often, and in many cases justifiably, called into question.

“No doubt, as Nigeria moved from the use of manually compiled register with cold laminated voters’ cards, to a biometric register (since 2006) with smart voters’ cards and verification and authentication devices such as Card Reader and BVAS (since 2015), incremental positive changes have been recorded with regards to the integrity of the voter’s register.

“However, many major challenges with regards to the integrity of the register still persist, and they need to be appropriately addressed.”

In his contribution, Ibeanu called for the linkage of INEC voters register with the data of the National Population Commission for ease of reference.

Also, the executive director of YIAGA Africa, Samson Itodo, highlighted the problems of maintaining integrity in voter register to include absence of a legal framework for cleaning voter register and politically inflated voter register.