Okoye says INEC has no choice but to use the existing voters register in 2027

Festus Okoye, a former National Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), says the commission has no choice but to use the existing voters register for the 2027 general elections, even though he doubts its credibility.

He spoke on Channels Television's Politics Today on Tuesday, when asked what could give Nigerians confidence in the register to be used in 2027. "The truth of the matter is that there is nothing we can do now. We have to go into the election with this current voters' register," he said.

Okoye described the register as opaque and said it cannot be called a clean or genuine register. His position, he said, is that Nigeria must compile a new biometric voters' register immediately after the 2027 elections.

His comments follow concerns about irregularities reported during INEC's 2025/2026 Continuous Voter Registration exercise. The commission displayed its preliminary register between October 9 and 15, 2026, so that voters could check their details and file claims and objections, and also published it online.

On November 9, INEC Chairman Prof Joash Amupitan announced that the commission had removed 1,608,660 invalid registrations from the exercise, along with 873 records belonging to verified deceased persons. He also said 54 officials across 10 states had been identified for administrative investigation and possible prosecution over registration irregularities, including multiple registrations and manipulated photographs.

Amupitan said the exercise has been concluded and that final reconciliation, quality assurance and publication checks are under way ahead of the release of the final register on December 15, 2026. The combined number of records removed under the invalid-registration and deceased-person categories is 1,609,553, he said, according to Punch.

He said the irregularities became a major issue after the preliminary register was published and drew public complaints about suspected duplicate registrations, manipulated photographs, unusual names and registration patterns, and deceased persons who still appeared on the list. Some members of the public alleged that the irregularities were introduced deliberately to compromise the 2027 elections. The commission chose to wait until the 14-day statutory period for complaints had ended before presenting its findings and answering the allegations.

Amupitan also said the clean-up would not solve every problem with the national register, since some irregularities date back to earlier registration exercises.