The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has expressed serious concern over what it described as “statistically implausible” pre-registration figures released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the first week of the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise.

In a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, the party questioned how Osun State alone recorded 393,269 pre-registrations within seven days, surpassing the total number of new voters registered in the state between 2019 and 2023.

> “To put this in context, Osun added only 275,815 new voters over a period of four years. Now, by some miracle, the state has supposedly registered more people in one week than it managed to do in an entire electoral cycle,” the statement read.

The ADC noted sharp regional disparities, pointing out that the South West accounted for 67% of all pre-registrations nationwide, while the South East recorded just 1,998 within the same period. It further observed that Osun, Lagos, and Ogun States combined made up 54.2% of the national total, while five other states collectively contributed barely 0.2%.

“These fantastic figures suggest either another technical ‘glitch’ in INEC’s digital registration system, or a more troubling possibility of deliberate manipulation of data to lay the ground for a sinister agenda,” the party warned.

Stressing that the voter register is the foundation of Nigeria’s electoral system, the ADC cautioned that any compromise at this stage could undermine public confidence ahead of the 2027 general elections.

The party therefore demanded that INEC conduct and publish a forensic audit of the first-week registration data, including a state-by-state breakdown of online and physical registrations, alongside server logs and bandwidth reports.

It also called on opposition parties, election monitoring groups, fact-checking organisations, and the international community to scrutinise the figures and press for transparency.

 “The credibility of our democracy cannot be left to chance. Silence in the face of these anomalies would amount to complicity. Nigerians deserve an explanation, and INEC must provide one,” Abdullahi said.