BY BENEDICT NWACHUKWU, ABUJA
Independent National Electoral Commission Chairman, Prof Joash Amupitan has lamented the persistent reference to the nation’s democracy as nascent after over two decades of uninterrupted civilian rule even as he questioned when the country would take her place as Africa’s largest democracy leading with backing performance rather than mere title claim.
The INEC Boss while reflecting on Nigeria’s democratic growth, urged civil society organisations, community leaders, the media, and citizens across the country to rally behind the Commission as it opens the crucial Claims and Objections window for the first phase of the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise on December 15.
He warned that Nigeria’s democracy cannot gain credibility or maturity if the national voters’ register remains filled with the names of people who have died, moved, or are otherwise ineligible.
Prof. Amupitan made the appeal in Abuja on Thursday, at the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room’s Stakeholders’ Forum on Elections, where he delivered an extensive and soul-searching address on “The state of the nation’s democracy, the challenges of election management, and the critical roles played by CSOs, political actors, security agencies, and citizens.”
The INEC Chairman, barely two months in office and attending the forum on a day originally slated for the Commission’s weekly meeting, said he considered his presence a duty to the nation. He emphasized that the upcoming phase of Claims and Objections is decisive for strengthening the integrity of Nigeria’s voters’ register, describing it as “a task the Commission cannot accomplish alone.”
Prof Amupitan expressed concern that many Nigerians do not review the public display of the provisional register, allowing errors, duplications, and names of deceased persons to go unreported.
While citing his discovery during the Anambra state governorship election preparations, where a prominent leader who died during the 2020 lockdown still appeared on the register, the legal luminary said such lapses erode trust in the electoral process and damage Nigeria’s democratic credibility.
Urging citizens to take the exercise seriously, he stated that the public must help identify names that should be removed, errors that require correction, and omissions that need to be fixed.
“If we cannot clean up our register, we cannot claim credibility. We need CSOs, community leaders, and the Media to mobilize Nigerians to examine the lists. INEC cannot do it alone.”
He said, “Phase 1 of the CVR, which began on 18 August and concluded on December 10, recorded a nationwide total of 2,685,725 registrations. Of this figure, 1,576,137 completed their registration online, while 1,109,588 completed the process through physical capture.”
He commended the rising political awareness reflected in the numbers, noting that states such as Osun, Kano, Sokoto, Imo, Borno, and Lagos are leading the pack in registration turnout.
He further stated that the Commission will begin Phase 2 of the registration exercise on January 5, 2026, relocating many registration centres closer to registration areas and hard-to-reach communities to further deepen inclusivity and ease access, adding, “this decision emerged from field assessments showing that distance and poor accessibility hindered turnout in many locations.”
He emphasized that democracy is a cultural system, not an imported ideology, and noted that Nigeria must adapt democratic values to its social realities rather than copy foreign systems wholesale without contextual relevance.
On the integrity of elections, the INEC Chairman reiterated that the Commission’s adoption of technology, including the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal, has transformed electoral transparency and boosted the integrity of elections. “BVAS, has shut the door to over-voting and manual manipulation, while IReV has thrown open the results collation process for public scrutiny in real time.
“Yet technology is not a silver bullet, network limitations across 176,000 polling units continue to hamper real-time uploads. The Commission’s mock accreditation in Anambra, had instances where accreditation data failed to reflect instantly due to poor connectivity, as well as cases where trained presiding officers struggled with uploads on the field.”
The INEC Boss however, stated that the Commission is engaging telecom providers and the National Communications Commission (NCC) to resolve these weaknesses while exploring alternative technologies and redundancies and added that INEC looks forward to a future where it can control its own network infrastructure instead of relying wholly on external service providers.
