The Independent National Electoral Commission has announced the postponement of its planned nationwide voter revalidation exercise, resolving to push the programme back until after the 2027 general elections following a meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners held on Friday and amid a torrent of public criticism and political opposition that had greeted the exercise since it was first announced.
The decision was conveyed in a statement signed by the National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, Mohammed Kudu Haruna, who said the commission reached the resolution after deliberating on the proposed exercise during its Friday meeting with RECs from across the country. The announcement effectively brings to a halt an exercise that had been scheduled to commence on April 13, 2026, and run through to May 29, 2026, in phases that would have taken it from the local government level down to individual polling units across Nigeria.
INEC had originally designed the revalidation exercise as a comprehensive effort to clean up and strengthen the national voter register, targeting what it described as null and ineligible voter entries, including records of deceased persons, non-Nigerians, underage registrants and cases of multiple registrations. The commission had been clear that the exercise was not a fresh voter registration but was specifically aimed at reviewing and verifying the records of Nigerians who registered between 2011 and 2024, with a view to ensuring the accuracy of personal data, eliminating duplicate entries and improving the overall credibility of the voter database ahead of future elections.
However, the planned exercise had run into a storm of opposition almost from the moment it was announced. The Kabiru Tanimu Turaki-led faction of the Peoples Democratic Party described the timing as suspicious, with its National Publicity Secretary, Ini Ememobong, saying there was a widespread perception that the exercise was strategically designed to disenfranchise large numbers of Nigerians rather than serve any genuine administrative purpose. The African Democratic Congress also raised alarms, questioning why such a consequential exercise was being introduced just days before its scheduled commencement and warning INEC against any action that could be perceived as facilitating electoral manipulation.
Northern groups were particularly vocal in their opposition, arguing that the exercise posed a disproportionate threat to voter participation across the North, where security challenges and other logistical difficulties would have made meaningful compliance with the revalidation requirement extremely difficult for millions of registered voters. Several groups called on northern leaders and institutions to resist what they characterised as a structurally unfair process, and demanded that the exercise be either abandoned entirely or deferred until conditions allowed for genuinely inclusive participation.
The controversy had already prompted INEC to act even before Friday's formal postponement announcement. In a letter dated April 4, 2026, signed by the commission's Secretary, Rose Oriaran-Anthony, all RECs had been directed to immediately suspend all publicity and logistical preparations for the exercise and await further directives from the commission. INEC also converted a scheduled in-person meeting with RECs from a physical gathering to a virtual session conducted via Zoom.
Despite the postponement, the commission maintained in Friday's statement that the voter revalidation exercise remained a critical component of its mandate to keep the national voter register credible and up to date, and reaffirmed its commitment to the conduct of free, fair, credible and inclusive elections in Nigeria.
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