The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has projected that the number of registered voters in Nigeria will exceed 100 million ahead of the 2027 general elections.
With this, it plans to deploy approximately 1.4 million ad hoc personnel across more than 176,000 polling units (PUs) nationwide for the elections.
Meanwhile, Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the late President Muhammadu Buhari, has disclosed that former Chairman of INEC, Prof Attahiru Jega, gave Nigeria its best election since the annulled June 12, 1993 poll.
Chairman of INEC’s Information and Voter Education Committee (IVEC), Mohammed Haruna, disclosed yesterday in Abuja at the commission’s joint implementation meeting of the Departments of Voter Education and Publicity (VEP) and Gender and Inclusivity (G&I), that the existing voter register stood at more than 93 million, adding that the figure was expected to cross the 100 million mark when the nationwide Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise is finalised.
The development would further position Nigeria as Africa’s largest electoral democracy, he said at the meeting organised to develop a communication and inclusivity roadmap for the 2027 general elections, with emphasis on ensuring that the elections are credible, peaceful and inclusive.
With 151 days to the first phase of the 2027 elections, Haruna charged INEC information officers to ensure effective and timely publicity to mobilise eligible Nigerians to participate in the polls.
Chairman of INEC, Prof. Joash Amupitan, during a meeting with the International Republican Institute (IRI)’s Pre-Election Assessment Mission delegation led by former United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Ambassador Jendayi Frazier, at the commission’s headquarters in Abuja, said the scale of the deployment reflected the enormous logistical operation required to conduct the 2027 elections.
He said: “In 2027, INEC will deploy a workforce of approximately 1.4 million ad-hoc personnel across more than 176,000 Polling Units nationwide,” adding that the commission was already implementing an operational roadmap ahead of the elections, including Continuous Voter Registration and a comprehensive audit of the voter register.
According to him, the commission will deploy its Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) to identify and eliminate duplicate voter records and maintain an accurate register.
Shehu, while commending Amupitan on the outcome of Saturday’s governorship election in Osun State, wondered why Amupitan had been silent despite INEC’s success in the election.
In the statement tagged, ‘Where is Professor Amupitan’, Shehu said: “I don’t know him, and we have never met. I have no reason to wish to meet him, either. When they nominated him as the Chairman of INEC, the nation received the shocking disclosure of his 2020 legal brief to the international community in which he claimed that the violence in the country was a Muslim pogrom against Christians. The violence affected and still affects followers of all religions and speakers of every language. For this reason, I, among many others, felt bad about the assertion he made and assumed that he was not a good choice for that office. This country’s elections had incrementally got better with each new leadership.
“Professor Jega gave the nation its best election since the disputed June 12, 1993, poll that produced Chief MKO Abiola, now recognised as a duly elected president who did not, however, take office.”
