The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is examining the role of some registration officials in the creation of suspected false voter records, as it reviews entries on the preliminary register ahead of the 2027 general elections.
The commission’s Director of Information and Communication Technology, Lawrence Bayode, said some officials had used their access to enter questionable profiles, including records with manipulated photographs and biometric details.
Bayode said INEC had withdrawn the officials’ access to the registration system while he compiled evidence for a report to the commission. The commission would consider the findings and decide what action to take.
He made the disclosure during an interview on Channels Television on Sunday, 1 November.
Asked about the scale of the problem, Bayode said: “It’s bad.” He added: “I’ve seen what they did, and it’s horrible.”
He said he had not yet submitted his report because he wanted to establish the evidence against the individuals concerned.
“You don’t just go and implicate somebody. You need to have watertight evidence,” he said.
Bayode suggested that officials found responsible could face stronger sanctions than those imposed in previous cases. He also acknowledged the effect of the controversy on confidence in the electoral body.
“The trust is on ground zero,” he said.
More than 11 million people registered during the 2026 Continuous Voter Registration exercise, according to Bayode’s account reported by Premium Times. The newspaper said INEC’s Automated Biometric Identification System, known as ABIS, flagged about 1.5 million records as suspicious.
Premium Times reported that 1,277,252 entries had been confirmed invalid and removed before the preliminary register was released, while approximately 268,000 required further checks. A flagged record is not necessarily fraudulent: Bayode said each one must be examined before INEC decides whether to remove it.
“The business rule of the ABIS is that you don’t remove any suspect. Any suspect has to be adjudicated,” he said.
Channels Television, which conducted the interview, reported that ABIS had flagged 268 records for review over suspected AI-generated photographs and other irregularities. The reports do not make clear whether that figure and the larger total refer to the same records or different groups.
Bayode said some questionable profiles contained pictures generated with artificial intelligence or images taken from calendars. In other instances, he said, the same photograph appeared on several registrations.
He alleged that some officials also misused a special registration option intended to accommodate people with disabilities, including applicants who do not have all their fingers.
“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.
The provision allows eligible people with missing fingers to register. The absence of fingerprints alone does not establish that an entry is false.
Bayode drew a distinction between a fabricated image and a genuine photograph enhanced by software. Some applicants, he said, used phones that automatically improved their pictures during registration.
“You can’t exclude such a person, because it was the AI on the phone that did that,” he said.
He said INEC had encountered similar misconduct during the 2023 registration exercise, although he considered the latest problem more extensive. He could not yet determine whether outsiders had coordinated the activity or whether the officials had acted independently. The irregularities appeared in some states, he said.
On the use of officials’ accounts, Bayode argued that the system’s one-time password requirement made it difficult for a worker to deny knowledge that someone else had used their credentials.
“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.
The concerns arose after INEC placed its preliminary register online on 26 October. Members of the public identified entries they considered questionable, including apparent duplicate records, names of deceased people and photographs suspected to have been generated by AI.
INEC had displayed the same preliminary register physically at registration areas from 9 to 15 October. The commission said the online copy did not reflect every data-cleaning activity already under way and that it expected to certify the final register on 15 December.
Bayode said biometric screening took longer than the commission had anticipated, leaving it to balance further checks against the deadline for displaying the register.
“We didn’t calculate very well the time it would take to run this ABIS,” he said.
Section 19 of the Electoral Act 2026 provides for a seven-day display of the register and requires INEC to accept and consider objections and complaints within the period set out in the law. It also allows members of the public to raise objections or make claims during the display.
Bayode said officials needed to verify suspicious entries carefully to avoid removing eligible voters.
“I need to confirm before you go and exclude an eligible voter,” he said.
Asked whether an outside body could examine the register, he said that decision rested with the commission.
“If the commission decides to bring a third party to scrutinise, then they can bring them,” he said.
He added that Nigerians could seek certified true copies of the register to examine its contents. INEC would also consider verifiable information about deceased voters, he said.
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project has separately called for an independent investigation by the Nigeria Data Protection Commission. The organisation asked the regulator to establish whether personal data had been unlawfully accessed or altered and to help ensure affected voters could correct their records without unfair exclusion.
Bayode maintained that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System would provide a further identity check at polling units. He said facial verification would make it difficult to vote using a registration based on a false photograph.
“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 said INEC had postponed a planned voter revalidation exercise until after the elections because of concerns that it could disenfranchise eligible voters.
Responding to questions about the technical problems experienced during the 2023 elections, Bayode said the commission had addressed faults in its results-upload system and intended to conduct a larger mock exercise before the next polls.
“I can assure Nigerians that the commission is trying its best to conduct a credible election,” he said.
Under INEC’s election calendar, the presidential and National Assembly elections are scheduled for 16 January 2027. Governorship and state House of Assembly elections in participating states are scheduled for 6 February.