“The ABIS for the period Jan. 15 to July 31, 2022 is almost completed. Several double, multiple and ineligible registrants have also been detected and invalidated.

“These include entries that failed to meet the Commission’s business rules. The Commission takes this responsibility seriously because a credible register is at the heart of electoral integrity.

“As soon as the process is concluded, the Commission will provide the public with full information as usual”.TheNational Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education CommitteeofINEC, Festus Okoyehas said. Hemade the declaration in a statement issued on Mondayand made available to News Expressin Abuja.

Okoye, in the statement while explaining why the INEC took the action said further,“Thereafter, valid registrants will be added to the existing national register of voters before publishing same nationwide for scrutiny, claims and objections as required by the Electoral Act 2022.

“Similarly, Permanent Voters’ Cards for all valid registrants will be available for collection by the end of October and early November as promised’’.

He stated thatINEC has detected many double, multiple and ineligible registration in the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) held between Jan. 1 and July 31.

He said that the irregularities were discovered during the cleaning up of the voters register using the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS).

INEC had earlier declared that out of the 2,523,458 registration done between June 28, 2021 and Jan. 14, 2022, records of 1,126,359 registrants were found to be invalid and they were consequently delisted.