The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has criticised the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) first-week report on new Permanent Voter Card (PVC) pre-registrations, describing the figures as “statistically implausible” and warning that they could undermine the integrity of Nigeria’s electoral process.
In a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, the party expressed concern over the unusually high numbers recorded in the South-West, particularly Osun State.
“According to INEC’s figures, Osun State alone recorded 393,269 pre-registrations in just one week. To put this in context, Osun added only 275,815 new voters between 2019 and 2023, a period of four years. In other words, Osun has now supposedly registered more people in seven days than it managed to do in an entire electoral cycle of four years,” the statement read.
The ADC added that the figures surpassed historical voter participation levels in the state. “Even at its highest point of political mobilisation in 2022, Osun has never produced more than 823,124 votes cast in the Governorship Election. Now, by some miracle, nearly 20 percent of all eligible adults in the state have rushed to register. This is not just unusual, it is statistically implausible,” Abdullahi said.
The party also highlighted regional disparities, noting that the South-West accounted for 848,359 pre-registrations, about 67 percent of the national total. By comparison, the South-East recorded only 1,998 registrations, while the North-East contributed just 6.1 percent of the overall figure.
“Three states — Osun, Lagos, and Ogun — make up 54.2 percent of all pre-registrations in Nigeria, while five states combined — Ebonyi, Imo, Enugu, Abia, and Adamawa — barely recorded 4,153, or 0.2 percent,” the statement said.
“These fantastic figures suggest either another technical ‘glitch’ in INEC’s digital registration system, or a more troubling possibility of deliberate manipulation of data to lay the ground for a more sinister agenda in the coming elections. In either case, INEC has some explanations to give,” the party warned.
Emphasising the central role of the voter register in credible elections, the ADC stressed that any compromise could erode public confidence.
“The voter register is the foundation upon which the entire electoral process rests. If the foundation is compromised, it brings the integrity of the elections into question,” Abdullahi said.
The ADC urged INEC to urgently conduct and publish a forensic audit of the pre-registration data, with a state-by-state breakdown of physical and online registrations.
It also demanded the release of server logs, bandwidth distribution, and regional access reports for the registration portal during the period in question. “History has shown that when questions about the voter register are left unanswered, the consequences go beyond politics; they touch on national stability itself,” the statement added.
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