Voters Registration: INEC Asks Population Commission to Avail it with Death, Birth Statistics

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has called on the National Population Commission (NPC) to make available the statistics of deaths and birth data to enable it to update and clean its voters register.

This is as the NPC Chairman, Nasiru Isa, has said that there may be a national census next year subject to approval by the

Presidency.

The INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, made the request when the NPC boss, Isa, visited INEC’s headquarters as part of efforts to engender a smooth working relationship between the two commissions.

While making the request for the statistics of death and birth, the INEC boss said, “The idea is to enable INEC to easily delimit and periodically review Electoral Constituencies based on NPC’s figures whenever there is a new population census.

“This cannot be achieved without accurate population data. This is partly why no constituencies have been delimited in Nigeria since the last exercise was carried out 25 years ago in 1996 by the defunct National Electoral Commission of Nigeria (NECON). Working together with the population commission, we are determined to make a difference this time around, just as we solved the problem of voter access to Polling Units in Nigeria.”

The INEC chairman told the visiting NPC delegation that the election management body had already prepared and produced a Discussion Paper on Electoral Constituencies in Nigeria looking at the issues more broadly, including the imperative of a new population census. “We will share copies of the Paper with the NPC at this meeting,” Yakubu said.