INEC to suspend online voter registration in Lagos for 1 week

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has announced that it will suspend the online Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) in Lagos state for 7 days.

This is to enable the commission to check for the correctness of information supplied by the registered people so far. INEC also announced that the biometric registration process will be suspended starting from Tuesday, 21^st September, 2021.

According to INEC, the suspension is based on its approved timelines and schedule and will commence on September 24 through September 30 2021. The Mahmood Yakubu-led body said the temporary CVR stoppage is to give room for all registrants to check for appropriateness or otherwise of their information supplied during the registration.

“ The 7-day long activities are also to raise objections (if any) about names that are not supposed to be on the register, like names of dead persons, foreigners and Nigerians below the age of 18.

Independent National Electoral Commission

Nigeria’s electoral umpire also said names of approved voters will be published in its offices across the 20 local governments in the state as it sought help from the public with respect to gathering information.

The commission also stated that the period will be used to prepare for upcoming activities and carry out necessary housekeeping (backend) activities in preparation for the next quarter.

Low registration and completion rates

INEC’s online registration exercise hasn’t witnessed as much participation as the commission would have liked. About a month ago, Technext reported that that only 1.9 million Nigerians have preregistered online for the Continuous Voters Registration.

Of this number, only 126,936 have completed their registration by physically visiting an INEC office.

It was reported that the low number could be due to the tediousness of the process as there are often long queues of people at INEC offices. Some people complained that the offices are difficult to locate. About 65% of online registrations came from the youth demographic, most of whom didn’t bother to complete the process physically.

INEC is also gearing up to introduce more electronic means. The commission already announced that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation Device (BVAD) would be deployed for the upcoming gubernatorial election in Anambra state. The BVAD is also a part of the ongoing registrations.

The device will be used for both facial and fingerprint verification in cases where the SmartCard reader fails. Unlike the SmartCard reader system that allowed people to vote even when their fingerprint was not verified, the Bimodal Voters Accreditation system (BVAS) will not allow such.

Now before a person is eligible to vote, the electoral overseer must have first verified that the information provided during registration is correct. Then on the day of the election, either your fingerprint or face capturing must be accepted by the BVAD.