About three months to the Anambra State governorship election, the Independent National Electoral Commission has announced that it has uncovered over 93, 000 fake names in the voters’ register.
This was made known by the commission’s chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega on Monday at an interactive session with media professionals and civil society organisations on voter register optimisation.
According to him, the figure represents 5.6 per cent of the total voting population of about 1.6m voters in the state.
The Anambra State governorship election has been slated for November 16 this year.
He said, “The INEC has identified 93,000 cases of ghost voters in Anambra State, which represents 5.6 per cent of the voting population in the state. We are commencing the prosecution of those involved.”
He added that the offenders would face prosecution as the commission was collaborating with the Nigeria Bar Association to bring the culprits to book.
Jega also said the commission was putting in place fresh measures to check the incidence of multiple registrations as witnessed during the 2011 general elections.
He added, “We have started working; I can tell you that before 2011 elections, we were not able to cross-check to know if there were cases of multiple registrations. We have identified more than 800,000 multiple registers.
“We have prosecuted over 200 people involved in electoral malpractices. It is an enormous work. We have a small legal unit. We are getting to a point where we will collaborate with NBA so that more people will be prosecuted.”
The INEC boss also explained that there was no confusion in the Anambra State chapter of the Peoples’ Democratic Party over its leadership.
He said, “As far as INEC is concerned, there is no confusion as to who is the PDP chairman. There is no court order stopping us from recognising the current leadership of the state chapter of the PDP. Any other person that parades himself as the chairman will be prosecuted.”
On the recent court ruling, which nullified INEC’s de-registration of 28 political parties, he said the commission would soon appeal the judgment.
He explained, “The laws are very clear under what conditions to register and deregister political parties. People are forgetting that we have three other court judgments thrown away by the courts.
“We will appeal the case and our lawyers are working on it. It is unfair to say that the court upturned our decision. We did the right thing and we are appealing that judgment.”