Oluwole Uzzi Reveals To Rufai Oseni Why There Are Underage Voters In INEC System

The Independent National Electoral Commission released a piece of information that about 2.72 voters have been de-registered by the system. And this is because most of the people are underage voters who are not eligible to exercise their franchise yet in the electoral system.

This raises a bit of worry that Nigeria is still facing a challenge with multiple registration of young kids being engaged to vote during elections.

In an interview with Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, a former director of Voter Education, Rufai Oseni questioned him on why Nigeria is still having this problem at this present dispensation and why proper technology is not being used to detect underage voters.

Oluwole replied by saying;

”INEC is not aware of any technology that actually tells the age of a person, even the MRI does not even tell you your age. It’s only when they study the feature of the bonds that they can say you are probably more than 17.

“Facial recognition does not tell an age. There are borderline cases where it would be difficult for the officials in charge of registration to make a call and then they can by law require you to produce evidence of your birth certificate.

“The borderline cases in communities that you go to, they come with parents and guardians and say this is my child, he’s over 18 years old. Some of those things you cannot argue with, when you ask them of a birth certificate, they tell you in the village they don’t have birth certificates because they are so rural.

“You ask for baptismal certificate and other evidence which they don’t support and then they put pressure on those officials who do the registration and get through with it.”