By Chuks Okocha
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.
He said that within the framework of the RA/EAD project, “we have jointly covered 261 LGAs nationwide. I am aware that NPC have covered more LGAs.
“Going forward, we are finalising a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which will be signed very soon. In the MoU, we have more clearly defined the scope and duration of our collaboration as well as the responsibilities of the two commissions. I want to reassure the NPC that we shall continue to strengthen our existing collaboration. After all, we are both public bodies funded by the treasury to work for Nigeria and Nigerians,” the INEC chairman explained.
In ensuring a collaborative partnership between the two agencies, the INEC chairman said that it had the largest biometric register of citizens in Nigeria complete with photographs and fingerprint information for voter authentication.
He also said that INEC had also introduced facial biometric authentication of voters which was successfully piloted in the recent bye-election in Isoko South 1 State Constituency in Delta State.
The INEC chairman also said that the commission would also explore other areas of cooperation to enable NPC and INEC to serve Nigerians better, but said, “Of immediate interest to INEC is how the NPC can provide data that will assist us in further enhancing the credibility of the National Register of Voters.”
In his remarks, the NPC chairman said that they were in INEC to further enhance their collaboration in their service to Nigeria, explaining that they have already delineated constituencies in the 774 local government areas of the federation as well enhancing their electronic capturing of data to improve their census duties.
