INEC Rejects Underage Voting
The Independent National Electoral Commission has reaffirmed to the Nigerian electorate that citizens who have not reached the legal voting age would not be permitted to vote in the wake of claims of underage voter registration ahead of the 2023 elections.
Victor Aluko, INEC’s director of voter education and publicity, made this statement on Sunday during a live appearance on Rubbin’ Minds on Channels Television.
“I assure you that the register will be cleaned up completely, and no underage voter will vote in 2023. After we finish with the claims and objections on Friday, we will be taking in again for further claims based on the people’s complaints,” he said.
“That is why it is important that persons who noticed any issues at all with the register should complain through the right channels where they can be documented.”
Aluko said that after compiling the complaints, the revision officers at different levels of INEC might begin working on them.
“If you complain and you do not let us know that complaint, then how do we work on the complaints?
“That is why I’m saying we take in the register, and then we work on the register, and at the end of the day, we have a very clean register as we prepare for the general elections.
“And I’m assuring you that no underage person will come to our polling units to come and vote on election day,” he said.
For the first time in the country’s electoral history, INEC made the whole register accessible on its website this month.
Numerous instances of duplicate registration and voting by minors have been reported, nevertheless, by several Nigerians.
Festus Okoye, the INEC’s National Commissioner, had last week promised Nigerians that the commission was committed to cleaning up the record and punishing those found guilty of tampering with it.
The issue of underage voting has raised various concern especially in the northern part of the country. One question that has remained unanswered is who registered the underage voters? If the commission did, are they to be trusted with their words? What is your opinion on this?
