The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has faulted the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) first Permanent Voter Card (PVC) pre-registration report, describing the figures as “statistically implausible” and “suggestive of manipulation.”
INEC had recently published data from its online pre-registration exercise, broken down by gender, state, occupation, and disability status.
However, the ADC, in a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, on Thursday, alleged that the figures released by the electoral body contained glaring anomalies.
Citing Osun State as an example, the party said the state reportedly recorded 393,269 new pre-registrations in just one week, far higher than the 275,815 voters it added over four years between 2019 and 2023.
“To put this in context, Osun has supposedly registered more people in seven days than it managed to do in an entire electoral cycle of four years. This is not just unusual; it is statistically implausible,” Abdullahi stated.
The party noted that even at the peak of voter mobilisation during the 2022 governorship election, Osun could not produce more than 823,124 votes cast.
It therefore questioned how nearly 20 per cent of the state’s eligible adult population could have rushed to register within one week.
According to the ADC, the pattern of registration was not only suspicious in Osun but also across the South-West, where the zone accounted for 848,359 pre-registrations, representing 67 per cent of the national total.
By contrast, the entire South-East recorded just 1,998 pre-registrations, while the North-East contributed only 6.1 per cent.
The statement further noted that three states — Osun, Lagos, and Ogun — made up 54.2 per cent of all registrations nationwide, while five others — Ebonyi, Imo, Enugu, Abia, and Adamawa — recorded a combined 4,153 registrations, less than 0.2 per cent of the total.
“These fantastic figures suggest either another technical ‘glitch’ in INEC’s digital registration system, or a more troubling possibility of deliberate manipulation to lay the groundwork for a sinister electoral agenda,” the party warned.
The ADC therefore demanded that INEC conduct and publish a forensic audit of the report, including a state-by-state breakdown of both physical and online registrations, as well as access logs and bandwidth distribution for the registration portal.
It also called on opposition parties, election monitoring groups, fact-checking organisations, and legal advocacy bodies to jointly interrogate the figures and press for accountability.
“The credibility of future elections depends on the integrity of this process. INEC must explain these glaring anomalies or risk eroding public confidence,” Abdullahi stressed.
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