INEC To Purge 1.5 Million Irregular Registrants As Ezekwesili Demands Amupitan’s Resignation

The Independent National Electoral Commission is set to delete about 1.5 million voter registrations found to be irregular from the national register ahead of the 2027 general elections, even as former Education Minister Oby Ezekwesili demanded the resignation of INEC Chairman Professor Joash Amupitan over the scandal.

The disclosure was made by Amupitan on Wednesday while receiving a delegation from the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel at the commission’s headquarters in Abuja, ValidViewNetwork reports.

THE PURGE

Amupitan said technology-enabled verification helped the commission isolate the affected entries. The deletions, he explained, are part of a comprehensive cleaning of the register through the claims and objections process.

The final register is scheduled for publication on December 15, 2026.He said the commission had registered approximately 103 million voters, with young Nigerians aged 18 to 34 making up nearly 29 per cent of them.

Amupitan said INEC would continue to strengthen the use of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System for accreditation and the INEC Result Viewing Portal for public access to polling-unit results.

A mock accreditation and election exercise is planned to test these tools before the 2027 polls.

EZEKWESILI’s DEMAND

Ezekwesili, however, said Nigeria could not conduct a credible 2027 election under an INEC led by Amupitan.

“INEC has lost all credibility to be an independent umpire of Nigeria’s elections,” she said.

She described the register fraud as “sabotage from within,” noting that INEC’s Director of ICT, Dr Lawrence Bayode, had admitted that registration officers used their official login credentials to inject AI-generated photographs, duplicate records and other fabricated entries into the preliminary register.

“Let us be clear about what this is. This is not a hack from outside. This is not a glitch. This is sabotage from within the very institution to which the Nigerian people entrusted the register of our sovereignty,” she said.

“The people paid to protect the list of citizens manufactured phantom citizens. The 2027 general elections are now a matter of months away, and the foundational document of those elections has been admitted by its custodian to be compromised”.

She argued that INEC could not investigate itself, adding that “no institution that has just confessed to corrupting a national asset from within can then ask the nation to trust it alone to repair the damage”.

THE UN SUPPORT

The UN delegation, led by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for West Africa and the Sahel, Leonardo Santos Simão, said the visit was meant to show UN support for INEC, noting that the commission carries a significant responsibility in managing elections in a country confronted by terrorism and other security challenges.

Amupitan identified misinformation, disinformation and foreign information manipulation as major threats to electoral integrity, warning that the growing misuse of artificial intelligence could undermine public confidence in the electoral system.

WHY IT MATTERS

The purge of 1.5 million irregular registrations is a necessary step, but it does not resolve the fundamental question of trust.

Ezekwesili’s demand for Amupitan’s resignation reflects a growing belief among Nigerians that the commission cannot be trusted to conduct a free and fair election in 2027.

The admission that its own officers injected fake records into the register has damaged INEC’s credibility in ways that a cleanup may not repair.

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The final register is due on December 15. The 2027 election is scheduled for January and February. And the clock is ticking. ValidViewNetwork reports.