234Next
7 March 2011
Barely three weeks before the national elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is faced with a fresh challenge: defending the final figures of registered voters, amid concerns that multiple registrations, which the commission says were dealt with, should have lowered the tally.
Some political parties have already denounced the figures and, last Friday, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) said the new register certified by the commission may not only affect the credibility of INEC, but also the credibility of upcoming elections seen as crucial to a long-tainted image of the electoral body.
"We are very uncomfortable with those figures. And until INEC comes up with very rational explanations about those figures, then there is cause for serious concern," Lai Mohammed, the national publicity secretary of the ACN told NEXT.
INEC, last Thursday, released the final results of the 2011 voters registration exercise. But critics are pointing to several inconsistencies. For instance, how the total figure moved from 67,764,334 to 73,528,040 when treated cases of duplication should have scaled down the number.
And if multiple registrations have truly been deducted from the earlier figures, as the commission claims, why should a state that has almost 15,000 cases of duplicities record the same figures for the provisional and final register.
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