The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says the statistics of voters registration in Bayelsa State during the last exercise shows that out of 132,628 persons that completed the registration in the state, only 43,678 were valid, while 88,950 (67.1%) were void.
INEC’s Resident Electoral Commissioner in the state, Dr. Emmanuel Alex Hart, disclosed this during a meeting with leaders of political parties in the state on Thursday in Yenagoa, the state capital.
He noted that the discovery was made possible when automated biometric identification system was used to clean up the voters’ registration from June 2021 to January 2022.
He adduced the development to double or multiple registration, underage registration and outright fake registration.
He said the commission had successfully implemented nine of the 14 activities for the general elections and was making progress in other critical areas including the receipt of some sensitive and non-sensitive materials, recruitment of ad-hoc staff and engaging security agencies under Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES) ahead of the February poll.
He said: “The foundation for credible election is the voters’ register. Before now the commission commenced an update of the voters’ register during the CVR which started on 28 June, 2021 and was suspended on 31 July, 2022. While the exercise was on the commission regularly gave updates on a weekly basis.
“Out of a total of 132,628 persons that completed registration, only 43,678 were valid and 88,950 invalid. Invalid registration for that period was 67.1%. The commission has completed the exercise to clean up the register and in the next few days, hard copies will be displayed in the 105 registration areas (wards) and eight (8) L
Local government areas of the state.
“The register will also be published on INEC’s website for claims and objections as required by law. The physical display of the register will take place at the registration areas (wards) from Saturday November 12 to Friday, November 18, 2022.
“Let me use this opportunity to caution political parties, candidates and their supporters to eschew violence and inciting rhetorics as they campaign.
“The training of Master Trainers on Election Technology has commenced to ensure a seamless process and it will cascade to the presiding officers that will be recruited. I wish to emphasize that there is no going back on the deployment of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for voter accreditation, there is no going back on the transmission of results to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) in real-time on election day.
“There will be no Incident Form that enables ineligible persons to vote using other people’s Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) during elections.”
