INEC chief orders review of voter card bottlenecks in South-East ahead of 2027
- INEC chairman Prof. Joash Amupitan told South-East staff in Enugu to clear every obstacle to PVC collection.
- He said the national voter register has passed 103 million after three registration phases.
- Sources differ on the total of new registrants: two put it at 10,772,421, another at 10,601,098.
The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Joash Amupitan, has ordered officials in the South-East to review voter registration records and remove every obstacle blocking the collection of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) ahead of the 2027 general election.
Amupitan gave the directive on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, in Enugu, at a meeting with INEC staff in the zone as part of the commission's readiness checks for 2027.
He said the commission's main job in the region is to go through local Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) records and clear the bottlenecks affecting PVC distribution.
"No eligible citizen who registered should be disenfranchised by administrative or logistical friction,"
he said, according to the accounts carried by Vanguard, Daily Post, Leadership and Tribune.
For an ordinary voter in the South-East, the message is simple: if you registered, you should be able to pick up your card and vote. The commission is promising to fix whatever is slowing that down.
What the numbers say
Amupitan said the National Register of Voters now stands at more than 103 million people.
He said the commission ran three phases of registration under Section 10 of the Electoral Act 2026. The first, from August 25 to December 10, 2025, recorded 2,611,266 registrants. The second, from January 5 to April 17, 2026, recorded 4,121,835. The third, from May 11 to July 26, 2026, recorded 3,867,997.
The outlets do not agree on the total. Vanguard and Tribune put the new registrants at 10,772,421, while Daily Post reported 10,601,098. All four said the figures still need final checks by the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) at the national headquarters to remove duplicate registrations.
Amupitan said the third phase introduced an online registration portal, the first of its kind in Nigeria, to cut the distance and time barriers to registering. He also said printable PVC technology, allowed under Section 18(1) of the Electoral Act 2026, should end months of waiting to collect a card.
Why Enugu matters
The Enugu meeting is the third stop on a nationwide readiness tour, after Lagos on September 7 and Kaduna on September 28, 2026. Amupitan said no INEC chairman had visited the Enugu office since 1999.
He told staff the election will not be won or lost in Abuja meeting rooms but in the field, across the South-East's 95 local government areas, registration area centres and polling units.
According to Tribune, the presidential and National Assembly elections are set for Saturday, January 16, 2027, with governorship and State House of Assembly polls on Saturday, February 6, 2027. Amupitan said the 2027 vote will cover 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, more than 103 million registered voters and 176,846 polling units.
He listed public distrust, voter apathy and misinformation as the commission's main challenges, warning that a single fake news post or deepfake video can spread fast.
On security, he said the commission had tightened its work with the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES). He said intelligence from the Department of State Services (DSS) led to the arrest of those behind a plot targeting ad hoc staff, especially corps members, and that they would be prosecuted.
He also warned staff against partisan leaning, extortion and compromised ethics, saying such conduct will not be tolerated.
What happens next: INEC officials in the South-East are expected to go through the registration records and clear the PVC collection problems before the 2027 ballots.
