Ex-INEC director says voter register not fit for 2027 without cleanup
- A former INEC director, Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, says the voter register cannot deliver credible 2027 elections unless it is cleaned up.
- INEC has admitted its own officials uploaded AI-generated photos and duplicate entries into the preliminary register.
- The commission says it is reviewing the flagged records and correcting them before the 2027 general elections.
A former director at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, has warned that Nigeria's voter register is too flawed to produce a credible general election in 2027 unless it is properly cleaned up.
He spoke on Channels Television's Politics Today on Friday, days after INEC admitted that its own officials had injected fake records into the preliminary register.
"A compromised voter register cannot guarantee credible elections," Osaze-Uzzi said, adding that what the country has now cannot give credible polls in 2027 if the problems are not fixed.
He called on INEC to audit the register, remove dead people, underage registrants and multiple entries, and publish it so Nigerians can check it themselves before the elections.
What INEC has admitted
On Monday, 26 October, INEC opened an online portal, display.inecnigeria.org, where Nigerians could view the preliminary register for the 2027 election.
Within minutes, people began spotting duplicated voters and photographs that appeared to be generated by artificial intelligence (AI) — images of people who may not exist.
The next day, INEC acknowledged the problem. Mohammed Kudu Haruna, chairman of its Information and Voter Education Committee, said the commission had flagged "a number of questionable registration records" for examination, and that the online publication was the original preliminary register and did not reflect ongoing cleanup work.
On Arise News on Friday, INEC's Director of Information and Communication Technology, Lawrence Bayode, said field registration officers had used their official login details to upload the AI-generated photographs. He said the commission's Automated Biometric Identification System later flagged the anomalies.
Abideen Olasupo, who chairs BallotEyes and YvoteNaija, told Sunday Tribune that the discoveries threaten public confidence ahead of 2027.
Why it matters to voters
A voter register is the list of people allowed to cast ballots. If fake names sit on that list, ballots can be cast in their names — and the result of an election can be bent before a single real voter arrives at the polling unit.
Nigeria has been here before. After the 2007 elections, President Umaru Musa Yar'adua admitted the polls had "lapses and shortcomings", and a review panel led by former Chief Justice Mohammed Uwais recommended sweeping reforms. Under Professor Attahiru Jega, INEC introduced biometric registration, the permanent voter's card and card readers; his successor, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, brought in the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV).
The current INEC chairman, Professor Joash Amupitan, who took office in October 2025, has allowed Nigerians to view the register online — the same step that exposed the fake entries.
What happens next: INEC says it is reviewing the flagged records and will take corrective action under its procedures. Whether the cleanup is finished, and finished in public, before 2027 is the question Osaze-Uzzi and other observers are now asking.
