The Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) has declared that about 229 names of aliens discovered in the Voters Register for the forthcoming general elections have been removed.
The INEC chairman, Professor Mahmoud Yakubu, made the disclosure on Friday during the commission’s quarterly meeting with security agencies.
He said the aliens registered under the pretence that they were Nigerians but did not disclose whether they would be prosecuted, even as he acknowledged the role of officers of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS).
He further disclosed that INEC and Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) agreed to deploy their personnel to registration centres nationwide to ensure that only Nigerians would vote in the elections.
“We shall continue to work in partnership to ensure that our voter register is purged of ineligible registrants as enshrined in the Electoral Act,” Yakubu said.
He noted that, under Section 12(1) of the Electoral Act, people below 18 years of age, aliens and persons registered in absentia, were ineligible to register, assuring that INEC would “continue to thoroughly scrutinise all prospective registrants in the ongoing exercise in order to ensure that only eligible registrants are registered.”
Yakubu said the security agencies have a role to play beyond providing security on election day, disclosing that the nationwide Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise embarked upon by the commission was the most preparatory exercise before the general elections.
