Supplementary voters registration set for next week

A supplementary voter registration will be held across Nigeria between 21 and 23 January to cover intending voters in the coming general elections who were not covered during the main exercise last year, the electoral commission said on Wednesday.

Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Abel Guobadia, said the exercise would be restricted to only one centre in each of the country's 774 local governments. He said completion of the voter registration would be followed by a display of the full register of voters for inspection by the public in February.

INEC commissioners in charge of Nigeria's 36 states also began meeting in the capital , Abuja, on Wednesday to work out final logistics for the supplementary registration.

The first revision of the voters' register since President Olusegun Obasanjo's election in 1999 was held in September last year with huge numbers of people saying they were left out, despite a one-day extension of
the exercise by INEC.

There were widespread allegations that unscrupulous politicians had connived with lower ranking electoral officials to divert registration materials. Some observers reported that, in many centres, officials either appeared to sign up too many people too quickly or were registering under-aged people.

INEC then announced it would hold a supplementary exercise to try to reach its target of 60 million eligible voters after it might have sorted and authenticated those already registered.

Guobadia admitted to reporters on Wednesday that malpractices had been detected. Local newspapers reported that at least two million registrations were invalidated as either fake or irregular.

General elections are to be held between 12 April and 5 May.