Former Director of Voter Education of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Oluwole Uzi-Osaze, has provided clarity on the issues of underage and ineligible voters in the recently released Provisional Register of Voters.
Mike Igini, the former Akwa Ibom State Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), had accused some staff of the commission of registering underage voters.
Igini blamed the collapse of values in society for being responsible for underage registration, berating parents who allowed their underaged children to register as voters.
The PRV was released recently for citizens to look at, seek clarifications and make complaints to the commission where necessary.
Faces of alleged underage voters have been spotted in many states, especially in the North with Kano State said to have recorded over 2.72 million underage voters.
But speaking on Arise Television’s The Morning Show on Friday, Uzi-Osaze said the 2.72 was not for Kano alone but nationwide.
He explained further: “It’s either the electoral Commissioner was misquoted or he got it wrong. Somebody got it wrong.
“The total number of ineligible voters as released by INEC is 2.72 million people not just in Kano State but nationwide.
“The total number of people who turn out for CVR in Kano was five hundred and sixty something thousand and less than a hundred thousand …were actually held to be ineligible.
“It was not 2.73m in Kanu that were held ineligible, that figure is quite wrong. They’re not fake registrants but ineligible.
“Ineligible in the sense that were not supposed to have gone for CVR. Possibly they have registered before and are now going for double registration and multiple registration either deliberately or inadvertently. Inadvertently in the sense that they were required to do transfer but rather than do a transfer some people just went and registered afresh.
“And INEC now found out that these people were previously on the register so they knocked them out. They removed them. And some others registered more than once in the same CVR exercise either they deliberately changed clothes or changed names and those ones were also discovered and left out.
“Those that did not pass what INRC call their business rule for example if they were currently underage, were removed but having said that there are others who were not cut. The 2.7 is nationwide and it’s for those who were unable to register under CVR.”