The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has disavowed any affiliation with a phony voter registration website that was set up by alleged criminals to dupe unwary members of the public.
Just one day after INEC’s Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) campaign finished, the bogus portal was launched.
In a news release on Monday, Festus Okoye, National Commissioner of INEC and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, sounded the alarm.
“Barely 24 hours after the suspension of voter registration, the attention of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has been drawn to an online site urging Nigerians to enroll for “VOTER CARD (PVC)” registration claiming that the Federal Government has approved individual VOTER CARD (PVC) registration online to avoid unnecessary crowd in the “NIMC” CENTERS.
“The Commission states unequivocally that the site is not linked to the Commission and the link/portal is spurious and from a dubious source.
“The Independent National Electoral Commission is the only body constitutionally and legally mandated to conduct the registration of persons qualified to vote in any election in Nigeria and to update and revise the register when the need arises. The Commission is solely responsible for organizing, undertaking, and supervising national elections in the country and does not share this responsibility with anybody or organization,” he said, cautioning members of the public against succumbing to “the antics of online scammers.”
On June 28, 2021, the current CVR exercise began, and it finished on July 30, 2022.
A total of 12,298,944 people successfully finished their registrations, the commission reported in its most recent CVR update, which was made public on Monday morning.
6,074,078 of the total population were men, and 6,224,866 were women. Additionally, the breakdown revealed that 8,784,677 of the total completed registrations are for young people.
