In the middle of October 2026, journalists from the Southern part of the country gathered in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State, for a workshop on ethical reporting ahead of the 2027 elections. The primary focus of the sessions, organised by Nigeria’s FactCheckAfrica and a Spanish group, FIAP, was combating electoral misinformation. Facilitators and participants generally named ordinary citizens and bad actors as sources of misinformation.
But an entity no one deemed fit to mention as a source of bad information was the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the electoral umpire, which they and millions of people across the country expect to be above board because of the sensitivity of its position. Yet, in the past few days, defective information has come from INEC, throwing its credibility – and to a larger extent, that of the 2027 elections – into question.
On Monday, October 26, the commission finally bowed to pressure and made the Preliminary Register of Voters for the 2027 general election available online to anyone who desires to view it. But minutes after the online portal, display.inecnigeria.org, came online, eagle-eyed Nigerians started to spot anomalies in the register: duplicated voters and artificial intelligence (AI)-generated photos of voters who do not seem to exist.
The implication, according to electoral observers, was that fake voters had been injected into the INEC database with the capacity to vote. If ballots are cast on behalf of those fake voters, the elections they participate in would be unfair.
Less than 24 hours after INEC announced the online platform, it acknowledged that its voter register contains defective entries. In a statement issued on Tuesday, October 27, Mohammed Kudu Haruna, Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee (IVEC), said the commission was aware of suspected AI-generated photographs appearing in the Preliminary Register of Voters.
Haruna, however, noted that INEC had identified and flagged ‘a number of questionable registration records’ for further examination during the physical display from October 9-15, suggesting that the electoral umpire was aware of the problems flagged by the public well before it made the register available to view online.
‘The online publication represents the original preliminary register and does not reflect all ongoing data-cleanup activities,’ the INEC spokesperson said, revealing that the commission had commenced the process of reviewing these questionable records and taking appropriate corrective action in accordance with established procedures.
But this attempt to correct the problem has hardly earned the electoral umpire plaudits. Instead, stakeholders have described the situation as a crisis of trust and credibility, expressing fears that it may take Nigeria back to the dark ages when fake voters were inserted into the voter register and used to rig elections, subverting the will of the electorate.
How INEC embraced technology
After President Umaru Musa Yar’adua assumed the presidency, he made a notable admission that no one in his position would be expected to make: on his first day in office, he admitted that the 2007 elections that brought him in had ‘lapses and shortcomings’. Indeed, hard evidence would arrive later to back his claim that the INEC data employed in that election cycle was compromised.
In a noble bid to reform the process and prevent a reoccurrence, Yar’adua set up a 22-member electoral review committee chaired by a former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Mohammed Uwais, on August 28, 2007. A little over a year later, in December 2008, the panel, popularly known as the Uwais committee, submitted its report to the president, who pledged to ‘carefully study and faithfully implement, with the support of the national assembly, those recommendations that will guarantee popular participation, ensure fairness and justice, and bring credibility to the electoral process in Nigeria.’
The committee recommended among others: constitutional amendments that would insulate INEC from the political influences of the executive arm of government in terms of its composition and funding; the power to appoint the INEC board was to be transferred from the president to the National Judicial Council (NJC); and a Special Electoral Offences Commission was to be set up to try electoral offenders.
About five months later, in May 2009, Yar’Adua forwarded the entire report, including its annexures, for the consideration of the National Assembly. Although the president rejected ceding the power of appointment of the INEC board, he accepted most of the fundamental recommendations and was to begin implementation when he took ill and eventually did not return to office due to his death in May 2010.
His successor, President Goodluck Jonathan, tried to sustain his efforts but got nowhere with the fundamental recommendations at the National Assembly. However, his appointment of Professor Attahiru Jega as the INEC chairman on June 8, 2010, kickstarted the commission’s technology adoption.
As all of this was going on, courts were removing governors and annulling elections from 2007, underlining the depth of the irregularities that marred that election cycle. In all, nine governorship elections in 2007, including those in Ondo, Ekiti, and Osun states, were nullified due to severe voting irregularities.
To address these irregularities, Jega’s solution was cleaning up the voter register and introducing the automated fingerprint identification system to stop voters from registering more than once, effectively halting voting by multiple people. This process helped restore some confidence in the 2011 elections and led to the introduction of the electronic register that has contributed to INEC’s current confidence crisis.
Jega also introduced the permanent voter’s card (PVC) and smart card reader for the 2015 general election. At the polling station, a voter’s identity is verified by matching his or her biometrics to the voter’s card. The voter is then allowed to vote and the votes are counted manually.
In 2022, Jega’s successor, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, introduced the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), which is an electronic device designed to read permanent voter cards and authenticate voters – using the voters’ fingerprints – to prove that they are eligible to vote at a particular polling unit. This was used in the Ekiti and Osun states’ governorship elections in June 2022 and July 2022. The technology worked to its design in both states.
The commission also introduced the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) ahead of the 2023 elections to guarantee transparent accreditation and uploading of polling unit results, although it ended up hurting confidence rather than helping it. The commission said the technology would enable citizens to view results in real-time on election day. But many of the results could not be uploaded onto the portal due to what INEC described as technical glitches. Also, the disparity between results uploaded to the portal and those announced by INEC ended up casting doubts on the outcome of the 2023 elections.
Professor Joash Amupitan, the current INEC chairman who assumed office in October 2025, has not introduced any technology, but he has sought to consolidate the gains of the past eras, including allowing Nigerians to view the voter register online and spot irregularities such as those that INEC is now cleaning up.
So, nearly two decades after the 2007 election debacle, many stakeholders fear that the country has reversed the gains of electoral credibility and returned to the dark ages of blatant rigging of the voter register.
Stakeholders raise the alarm
During an appearance on Arise News on Friday, October 30, Lawrence Bayode, INEC’s Director of Information and Communication Technology, admitted that the commission’s own registration officers uploaded AI-generated photographs into the national voter database. He stated that field officials used their official login details to deliberately inject fake records. He noted that the commission’s Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) eventually flagged these anomalies, but that has not halted the avalanche of criticism of the commission.
In an interview with Sunday Tribune, Abideen Olasupo, the Chairman of BallotEyes and YvoteNaija, described the revelation of AI-generated photos and duplicate entries in the voter register as a threat to public confidence ahead of the 2027 elections. ‘Trust in an election begins long before polling day; it begins with citizens believing that the register accurately reflects eligible voters… When people see questionable identities or duplicate records, they may conclude the process is already compromised, which discourages registration, verification, and turnout,’ he said.
‘The second implication is the credibility of the eventual results. An unresolved controversy over the register gives political actors grounds to challenge the process and makes it harder for citizens to accept outcomes, especially in closely contested elections. It also creates fertile ground for misinformation, where genuine irregularities might become the basis for broader, unverified claims.’
Similarly, Samson Itodo, the Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, another organisation focused on free and fair elections, said the integrity of the 2027 elections ‘is already under threat from serious infirmities in the voter register’.
‘These AI-generated images and suspected cases of register padding raises fundamental questions about the credibility of the register. A compromised voter register is a compromised foundation for credible elections. The infirmities in the register are not minor errors. They pose grave threats to voting rights and our democracy,’ he said.
Amid the silence of the ruling APC’s presidential campaign council (PCC), opposition parties have questioned INEC’s neutrality and capacity to deliver credible elections on January 16 and February 6, 2027.
In a separate interview with Sunday Tribune, Kola Ologbondiyan, the Director of Media and Publicity, African Democratic Congress (ADC) PCC, said the defective voter register makes it ‘increasingly challenging’ to entrust the 2027 elections to the commission’s care.
‘I think that, beyond identifying these staff, they have to clean up the system in a manner that Nigerians can trust INEC. That, too, is also very, very important. They must clean up the voters’ register. And I don’t know, why is it difficult for a commission that describes itself as independent to act independently? Why is it difficult?’ Ologbondiyan wondered.
The Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) PCC spokesperson, Dr Chiogo Constance Ikokwu, also questioned INEC over the presence of deceased Nigerians, including prominent politicians, on the voters’ register.
It called on INEC to provide Nigerians with answers and ensure the register was credible, up-to-date and verifiable before the 2027 elections.
CSOs, political parties seek accountability
Though INEC claims that some of its staff had compromised its system, it is yet to reveal their identities or even whether it has uncovered those responsible, leading to accountability calls from civil society organisations (CSOs) and political parties.
According to Ologbondiyan, it is not enough for INEC to come out and say its staff were responsible.
‘Who are these staff? Who are they? Did they fall from the sky? Also, don’t forget that the issue of the back-end of INEC’s system has been a subject of debate. There are non-state actors and individuals who have access to the back-end of INEC. They didn’t say anything, and they didn’t do anything about it, but now they are saying that their staff are the ones responsible. What type of staff are they? Are they the regular staff or the non-state actors who had access to their back-end the last time?’ the ADC campaign spokesperson asked.
Likewise, the BallotEyes and YvoteNaija chairman called for the identification of the registration officers implicated in the voters’ register scandal, while raising questions over INEC’s internal safeguards.
‘If a registration officer messes up, who is supervising them? Who controls access, and where is the institutional accountability? Nigerians deserve to know how these entries were created, why existing safeguards did not prevent them before they became public, and how widespread the problem is,’ Olasupo said.
Also, the Yiaga Africa boss called for a comprehensive investigation of the crisis. ‘We need an independent audit to enable citizens to understand the extent of the irregularities, identify those responsible and verify that the register is thoroughly cleaned before December 2026,’ Itodo said.
In a separate statement, his organisation called for serious consequences for those found culpable.
‘If a registration official can manipulate the voter register, what prevents a compromised election official from uploading falsified result sheets to IReV? Nigerians must therefore pay closer attention to the conduct of election officials, particularly those responsible for voter accreditation, results management and transmission,’ the organisation said.
Can INEC clean up its mess fast enough?
Although INEC says it is yet to establish a motive for the manipulation, many stakeholders view it as an attempt by desperate politicians to foist their will on the electorate. One of the many wards that has been fingered for irregularity is Edo State governor, Monday Okpebholo’s Polling Unit 001, Ward 2, Udomi Primary School, Irrua, in Esan Central Local Government Area of the state.
During his election in September 2024, his polling unit had 397 voters on its register. In INEC’s register for the 2027 elections, the register has curiously grown to 4,783 voters, a stunning 1,105% increase that has raised eyebrows in the political world. The polling unit also contains several AI-generated photos of supposed registered voters, casting doubt on whether there are genuinely 4,783 Nigerians registered to vote in that polling unit. Notably, the Edo governor has promised to deliver 2.5 million votes for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in a state that has turned out less than 700,000 voters in the past three presidential elections.
Moreover, these irregularities call into question the 103 million registered voters’ figure that the INEC chairman continues to cite in public appearances, including on Friday while receiving the ECOWAS Pre-Election Fact-Finding Mission at the commission’s National Headquarters in Abuja.
In the meantime, INEC must clean up the voter register and publish the final version by December 15, in about a month and a half. It is not clear how far the commission has gone in its efforts, but political parties, candidates, and voters are expecting a final register that they can trust.
The INEC chairman told the ECOWAS delegation on Friday that the commission has no preferred political party or candidate in the upcoming polls. But for millions of Nigerians watching the data cleanup closely, words may no longer be enough; they are waiting to see if INEC’s actions over the next six weeks will reflect an umpire ready to referee a fair game.