Osun Guber Polls: INEC disqualifies over 40% voters

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared the registration of 88,630 new voters in Osun State as invalid.

The development comes weeks to the gubernatorial election in Osun. The polls will be held on Saturday, July 16, 2022.

According to data presented by the commission at a media briefing on Wednesday, April 13, 2022, 218,142 new voters have been registered in Osun, out of which 129,512 were valid, 88,630 were invalid.

This number, the electoral umpire stated, represents 40.6% of the new voters who completed their registrations

Speaking at the briefing, Mahmood Yakubu, INEC chairman, said invalid registration was recorded in all the States across the country.

According to him, out of the 2,523,458 new registrations across the country, 1,126,359, representing approximately 45%, were invalid.

Yakubu said only 1,390,519 of new voter registrations are valid.

“The troubling issue of invalid registration still persists, which we detected while cleaning up the latest registration data.

“It seems that many registrants, either out of ignorance that they do not need to re-register if they had done so before, or a belief that our systems will not detect this infraction, have gone out to register again.

This is despite repeated warnings by the commission against this illegal action. In addition, there are also registrants whose data were incomplete and did not meet our business rules for inclusion in the register.

“This infraction happened in all States of the federation. No State is immune from it. These invalid registrations will not be included in the register of voters. This development is worrisome because of the time and resources expended in handling these cases.”

Meanwhile INEC has disclosed that a total of 1,854,859 Permanent Voter’s Cards (PVCs) are now ready to be delivered to its state offices across the country over the Easter holiday for subsequent collection.