Caleb Ifeanyi Onah, PBA Journalism MenteeThe Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has dissociated itself from fake voter registration websites requesting details from Nigerians to enrol them for permanent voters cards (PVCs).
INEC said it has ended it’s voter registration exercise on the 31 of July has link with such sites which it described as “spurious”.
Amidst the suspension of voter’s registration exercise by INEC, and the attendant last-minute rush by Nigerians in a bid to obtain their PVCs for the 2023 general elections, unauthorised websites (fake websites) have hijacked the moment to purportedly register citizens for PVCs.
However, INEC Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, in a statement on Monday, said the commission has nothing to do with such phony websites.
The unidentified dark website alleged that the Federal Government has ratified individual registration online to avoid needless crowds in the registration centres.
Part of the statement by Okoye read, “The Commission states unequivocally that the site is not linked to the Commission and the link/portal is spurious and from a dubious source.
“The Independent National Electoral Commission is the only body constitutionally and legally mandated to conduct the registration of persons qualified to vote in any election in Nigeria and to update and revise the register when the need arises.
“The Commission is solely responsible for organizing, undertaking, and supervising national elections in the country and does not share this responsibility with anybody or organisation.
“Members of the public are strongly advised not to succumb to the antics of online scammers and should avoid such fake sites.
“The Commission has concluded the Continuous Voter Registration exercise nationwide and does not need to open an additional site or portal for the purposes of registration of voters.”
Recall that the country’s electoral umpire had disclosed that the latest new registrants who completed their voter registration on Sunday are 12 million people.
According to a report published by INEC, the total number of registered voters in Nigeria may have risen from 84 million to 96.2 million.
The latest statistics released by the commission indicated that completed their registration reads 12.2 million registered as of 7 am on August 1, 2022.
Notably, the INEC Continuous Voters Registration (CVR) Weekly Update showed that Lagos State topped the chart as the state with highest number of registered voters, increasing it’s figure from 6.5 million to 7.1 million. This is followed by Kano which added 569,103, to increase its number of registered voters to 6.02 million.
By geo-political, zone, the North-West had the highest with a total of 22.67 million registered voters, followed by the South-South-West which now has 18.3 million from the earlier 16.29 million registered voters in 2019.
South-South takes third position rising from 12.8 million in 2019 to 15.2 million registered voters. The North-Central now has 14.1 million registered voters taking the fourth position.
South-East has now has 11.49 million registered voters. The North-North-North-East added 1.5 million to reach 12.8 million registered voters.
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