The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has expressed alarm over figures released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in its first-week report on new Continuous Voter Registration, describing them as suspicious and “statistically implausible.”
In a statement issued on Thursday, August 28, by its National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, the party pointed to anomalies in Osun State, where INEC reported nearly 400,000 new registrations in just seven days.
According to the statement, “Osun State alone recorded 393,269 pre-registrations in just one week.
“To put this in context, Osun added only 275,815 new voters between 2019 and 2023, a period of four years. In other words, Osun has now supposedly registered more people in seven days than it managed to do in an entire electoral cycle of four years.”
The ADC argued that such figures not only defy logic but could erode public trust in Nigeria’s electoral process.
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“Even at its highest point of political mobilisation in 2022, Osun has never produced more than 823,124 votes cast in the Governorship Election.
“Now, by some miracle, nearly 20 percent of all eligible adults in the state have rushed to register. This is not just unusual, it is statistically implausible,” the party said.
The statement also noted regional disparities in INEC’s report, observing that “the South West alone accounts for 848,359 pre-registrations, an astonishing 67 percent of the national total. By contrast, the entire South East recorded just 1,998 pre-registrations.”
The ADC warned that the figures suggest either a “technical glitch” or possible “deliberate manipulation of data,” and called on INEC to urgently conduct a forensic audit of the registration data, including server logs and access records.
The party urged opposition parties, civil society groups, and international organisations to demand accountability, stressing that “the credibility of our democracy cannot be left to chance.”