NOSA EGHAGHA
NIGERIA: Nigeria’s National Register of Voters has risen to more than 103 million, with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announcing that nationwide collection of newly produced Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) will commence on Friday, October 9.
INEC Chairman, Prof. Joash Amupitan, disclosed the figures and outlined the commission’s preparations for the 2027 general elections in an address presented on his behalf by the Lagos Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Prof. Ayobami Salami, at the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP) conference in Lagos on Wednesday, October 7.
The GOCOP conference, which brought together online publishers and other stakeholders in the media and electoral space, provided a platform for the commission to explain its preparations for the 2027 polls and the measures being introduced to strengthen public confidence in the electoral process.
Amupitan said the latest figure followed the completion of the three-phase Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise, which produced 10,772,421 new registrations, as well as the final clean-up of the register through the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS).
The three CVR phases recorded 2,611,266 registrations between August 25 and December 10, 2025; 4,121,835 between January 5 and April 17, 2026; and 3,867,997 between May 11 and July 26, 2026.
The commission has also completed the public display of the preliminary register for claims and objections, while preparations are underway for the final register.
Amupitan said INEC had completed the processing and printing of new voter cards using its newly introduced Printable PVC technology, with collection scheduled to begin nationwide on October 9.
He urged media organisations, particularly online publishers, to help educate registered voters on the collection process and encourage them to obtain their cards ahead of the 2027 elections.
The announcement comes as INEC moves into an increasingly intensive phase of preparations for the January 16, 2027 presidential and National Assembly elections, with the commission saying its focus has shifted from strategic planning to operational execution.
Amupitan said the commission’s preparedness should not be measured simply by the existence of laws or the deployment of sophisticated technology, but by how faithfully electoral officials execute the law and how transparently the process is administered.
He placed public trust at the centre of the commission’s preparations, warning that confidence in elections could not be created through public relations campaigns.
“Trust is neither an administrative inheritance nor a rhetorical concession; it is a currency earned through consistent, verifiable, and transparent execution,” he said.
According to him, electoral confidence has to be built “polling unit by polling unit, dataset by dataset, and process by process.”
The chairman said INEC’s responsibility therefore extended beyond the mechanical conduct of voting on election day to voter registration, accreditation, voting, counting, result transmission, collation and communication of outcomes.
“The true test of trust lies in how faithfully administrative custodians execute the statutory provisions, deploy technology, enforce internal discipline, manage logistics, and communicate outcomes to the electorates,” he said.
To strengthen the integrity of the 2027 elections, Amupitan said INEC had upgraded its Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), including hardware optimisation, battery calibration and software hardening.
The commission has also procured additional BVAS devices ahead of the elections and is conducting a nationwide audit to ensure that the machines are deployment-ready. Recent reporting on INEC’s preparations puts the number of additional BVAS devices procured at 57,000.
Another major component of the commission’s reform is the enhanced eEC8A system, designed to digitise polling-unit result sheets immediately after votes are counted.
Amupitan said the Form EC8A would be scanned and cryptographically signed at the polling unit before being transmitted to the public results-viewing platform, creating end-to-end visibility of results and reducing opportunities for manual alteration at intermediate collation points.
The commission is also deploying artificial-intelligence tools for data auditing and strengthening its cybersecurity infrastructure against cyber intrusions, distributed denial-of-service attacks and unauthorised data injection.
Amupitan said these measures were intended not only to secure the electoral process but also to address the deepening problem of voter distrust and apathy.
The concern is significant given Nigeria’s historically declining voter turnout, with participation in presidential elections falling sharply over successive election cycles.
The INEC chairman has maintained that technology alone cannot restore confidence unless citizens can see evidence that the electoral process is being conducted transparently and that their votes are accurately captured and reflected in the final outcome.
With more than 103 million Nigerians now registered, the challenge for INEC is therefore to translate the huge size of the voter register into meaningful participation at the polls.
The commission is also expected to display the voters’ register nationwide from October 9 to allow citizens to scrutinise their details and raise claims or objections before the final register is produced.
As the 2027 elections draw closer, Amupitan’s message to the GOCOP gathering was that the credibility of the election would ultimately be measured not by the sophistication of INEC’s systems, but by whether Nigerians can trust what happens to their votes after they cast them.
