By Ajibola Olaide, JKNewsMedia
NIGERIA’s voter register has crossed 103 million as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) prepares to begin nationwide collection of newly produced Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) on Friday, October 9.
JKNewsMedia.com reports that the INEC Chairman, Prof. Joash Amupitan, disclosed the figure and outlined the commission’s preparations for the 2027 general elections in an address delivered on his behalf by the Lagos Resident Electoral Commissioner (LREC), Prof. Ayobami Salami, at the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP) conference in Lagos on Wednesday.
Amupitan said the latest figure followed the completion of the three phase Continuous Voter Registration exercise, which produced 10,772,421 new registrations, and the subsequent cleaning of the register through the Automated Biometric Identification System.
The three CVR phases recorded 2,611,266 registrations between August 25 and December 10, 2025, 4,121,835 between January 5 and April 17, 2026, and 3,867,997 between May 11 and July 26, 2026.
Also, the commission said it has completed the public display of the preliminary register for claims and objections and is preparing the final register.
Amupitan also said INEC had completed the processing and printing of new voter cards using its newly introduced Printable PVC technology, with nationwide collection scheduled to begin on October 9.
He urged media organisations, particularly online publishers, to educate registered voters about the collection process and encourage them to obtain their cards ahead of the 2027 elections.
The announcement comes as INEC intensifies preparations for the January 16, 2027 presidential and National Assembly elections, with the commission moving from strategic planning towards operational execution.
Amupitan said the commission’s preparedness should not be judged simply by the existence of electoral laws or the deployment of sophisticated technology, but by how faithfully officials execute the law and how transparently the process is administered.
He placed public trust at the centre of the commission’s preparations, stressing that confidence in elections could not be created through public relations campaigns.
“Trust is neither an administrative inheritance nor a rhetorical concession; it is a currency earned through consistent, verifiable, and transparent execution,” he said.
He added that electoral confidence had to be built “polling unit by polling unit, dataset by dataset, and process by process.”
The chairman said INEC’s responsibility extended beyond voting on election day to voter registration, accreditation, voting, counting, result transmission, collation and communication of outcomes.
“The true test of trust lies in how faithfully administrative custodians execute the statutory provisions, deploy technology, enforce internal discipline, manage logistics, and communicate outcomes to the electorates,” he said.
To strengthen the integrity of the 2027 elections, Amupitan said INEC had upgraded its Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, including hardware optimisation, battery calibration and software hardening.
The commission has also procured additional BVAS devices and is conducting a nationwide audit to ensure the machines are ready for deployment.
Another component of the reforms is the enhanced eEC8A system, which is designed to digitise polling unit result sheets immediately after votes are counted.
Amupitan said Form EC8A would be scanned and cryptographically signed at the polling unit before transmission to the public results viewing platform.
He said the process would create end to end visibility of results and reduce opportunities for manual alteration at intermediate collation points.
The commission is also deploying artificial intelligence tools for data auditing and strengthening its cybersecurity infrastructure against cyber intrusions, distributed denial of service attacks and unauthorised data injection.
Amupitan added that the measures were intended to secure the electoral process while addressing voter distrust and apathy.
He maintained that technology alone could not restore confidence unless citizens could see evidence that the electoral process was being conducted transparently and that their votes were accurately captured and reflected in the final outcome.
With the voter register now exceeding 103 million, INEC disclosed that it faces the task of translating the expanded register into meaningful participation at the polls.
The commission, the Chairman also said, is also expected to display the voters’ register nationwide from October 9, allowing citizens to scrutinise their details and raise claims or objections before the final register is produced.
Amupitan told the GOCOP gathering that the credibility of the 2027 elections would ultimately be measured not by the sophistication of INEC’s systems, but by whether Nigerians can trust what happens to their votes after they cast them.
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