INEC investigates officials over fake voter registrations

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says some of its registration officials abused their official access to create fraudulent voter records, including profiles with fake photographs and manipulated biometric details.

The commission’s Director of ICT, Lawrence Bayode, said he was compiling evidence against the officials involved and would submit his findings to the commission for review and possible disciplinary action.

Mr Bayode spoke on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Sunday.

Asked about the scale of the problem, he said: “It’s bad.” Describing the actions of the officials, he added: “I’ve seen what they did, and it’s horrible.”

Mr Bayode said more than 11 million people registered during the 2026 Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise and that when INEC subjected the records to its Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS), the system flagged about 1.5 million as suspicious.

Of these, 1,277,252 were confirmed invalid and removed before the preliminary register was released, leaving about 268,000 records requiring further verification.

“The business rule of the ABIS is that you don’t remove any suspect. Any suspect has to be adjudicated,” he said, explaining that flagged records must undergo human review before a decision is made.

Mr Bayode said some of the suspicious records contained AI-generated photographs or images taken from calendars.

“You use a fake camera to deceive the system because it is a web-based application,” he said.

In other cases, the same photograph appeared on multiple voter profiles, a pattern he said raised concerns about the authenticity of the registrations.

“You cannot find seven, eight people, even if they are from the same family,” he said.

However, he cautioned against treating every photograph altered by artificial intelligence as evidence of fraud. Some applicants used phone applications that automatically enhanced their pictures during online registration, he said, adding that such voters would not be excluded on that basis alone.

“You can’t exclude such a person, because it was the AI on the phone that did that,” he said.

Mr Bayode said some officials also used their own login credentials to create the questionable profiles.

One method involved abusing a special registration option designed for people with disabilities who do not have all their fingers. The officials allegedly used the option to register fictitious people by claiming they had no fingers, allowing the system to accept their records without the usual fingerprint details.

“They went through the special registration, capturing without fingers, pretending that this person has no fingers, and because it is a special registration, the system will allow such,” he said.

He said the ABIS flagged the records because it detected faces without corresponding fingerprints.

Mr Bayode said INEC had encountered similar misconduct during the 2023 voter registration exercise, but not on the scale seen this year. The growing use of AI also made the latest cases harder to detect, he said.

“We saw things like this, but not to this extent. AI has not evolved then. AI is evolving now,” he said.

Asked whether outsiders had infiltrated the registration process or the officials acted on their own, Mr Bayode said he could not yet establish how the scheme was organised. He added that the irregularities had been detected in some states, but not across the country.

He also dismissed the possibility that the officials could escape responsibility by claiming their login details had been stolen.

“You can’t even say that to the commission now, because before you use this system, that system must send an OTP to your email or your phone number. So if anybody is using your login details, it means that you are conniving with that person,” he said.

Mr Bayode said INEC had withdrawn system access from the officials implicated in the exercise. The CVR exercise has also closed.

Mr Bayode said he had yet to submit his report to INEC because he wanted to ensure that the evidence against the officials was conclusive.

“You don’t just go and implicate somebody. You need to have watertight evidence,” he said.

He said the commission would review the findings and determine the appropriate action in line with due process.

Mr Bayode suggested that the officials could face stiffer sanctions than those imposed on staff involved in similar misconduct in 2023.

“Because of this great embarrassment, maybe the punishment now will be bigger than what they experienced,” he said.

He acknowledged that the controversy had damaged public confidence in the commission.

Mr Bayode said the commission released the preliminary register with suspicious records still in it because the biometric screening process took longer than expected, while the deadline for completing the exercise was approaching.

INEC had initially scheduled the release for 6 October but moved it to 9 October as it continued screening the records.

“We didn’t calculate very well the time it would take to run this ABIS,” he said.

He said the commission had to weigh the need to complete the screening against its legal obligations under the Electoral Act. The law provides for a seven-day public display of the preliminary register, followed by 14 days for claims, objections and corrections, he explained.

Mr Bayode said withholding the register could also expose him to legal consequences.

“There’s actually a criminal aspect to it,” he said.

He added that the commission had to avoid mistakenly removing eligible voters whose records were flagged by the system.

“I need to confirm before you go and exclude an eligible voter,” he said.

INEC plans to release the final certified register on 15 December, according to Mr Bayode.

He also defended the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), which will be used to verify voters at polling units on election day.

“The facial is there. The safeguard is already there. It will not allow you to cast your vote on the day of election,” he said.

He explained that BVAS would use facial verification to check voters’ identities, making it difficult for people whose registrations relied on fake photographs to vote successfully.

When asked whether an independent body would be allowed to scrutinise the register, Mr Bayode said INEC would decide.

“If the commission decides to bring a third party to scrutinise, then they can bring them,” he said.

He added that Nigerians could request certified true copies of the register to examine the commission’s work.

On removing deceased voters, Mr Bayode said INEC would act on verifiable evidence. He said states were already submitting the names of prominent deceased persons, as they did during the 2023 exercise.

He also said the commission postponed a planned voter revalidation exercise until after the election because it feared it could be used to disenfranchise eligible voters.

Addressing concerns arising from the technical problems that affected the 2023 elections, Mr Bayode said INEC had fixed the results-upload system and planned to conduct a larger mock exercise ahead of the next election.

“We have done all that we need to do humanly, and we have committed everything to God,” he said.

He urged Nigerians to maintain confidence in the commission’s efforts to deliver credible elections.

“I can assure Nigerians that the commission is trying its best to conduct a credible election,” he said.

The controversy over the voter register emerged in October 2026 after INEC uploaded its preliminary register online. Nigerians who examined the portal flagged several irregularities, including duplicate entries, the names of deceased persons and photographs that appeared to have been generated by artificial intelligence.