"Nigeria cannot conduct a credible 2027 election under the leadership of the Independent National Electoral Commission led by Prof. Joash Amupitan, as INEC has lost all credibility to be an independent umpire of Nigeria's elections, and ignoring this could upend our hard-won democracy."

The above is the view of former Minister of Education, Dr Obiageli Ezekwesili, in a statement following allegations of corruption involving the voter register through the use of artificial intelligence.

She noted that INEC's Director of Information and Communication Technology, Dr Lawrence Bayode, on October 30, 2026, told Nigerians on national television what many had feared and others had warned against.

INEC registration officers purportedly used their official login credentials to inject AI-generated photographs, duplicate records and other fabricated entries into the preliminary register of voters.

According to Bayode, the issue was not isolated but was found across many states.

He said the commission knew who had done it and how they had done it.

The INEC director, in that interview, said words that should stop every Nigerian in their tracks: that "the trust is on ground zero, and that some staff are trying to take us back to where we are coming from"

Ezekwesili said she put her hands on her head after the interview.

"Let us be clear about what this is. This is not a hack from outside. This is not a glitch. This is sabotage from within the very institution to which the Nigerian people entrusted the register of our sovereignty. The people paid to protect the list of citizens and not manufactured phantom citizens. The 2027 general elections are now a matter of months away, and the foundational document of those elections has been admitted by its custodian to be compromised.

"I speak today as an Occupant of the Office of the Citizen, which I have long told the world, especially Nigerians, that it is the highest office in any democracy. It is the office from which all other offices, including that of the president, senators, governors, lawmakers and public appointees like the Chairman of INEC, derive their authority and legitimacy. The register of voters neither belongs to INEC nor the Federal Government nor the ruling party. It belongs to us, the citizens of Nigeria. Period! INEC merely holds it in trust. That trust, by its own admission, has been totally broken with the AI infiltration of the voter register," she stated.

Ezekwesili argued that INEC could not investigate itself, adding, "No institution that has just confessed to corrupting a national asset from within can then ask the nation to trust it alone to repair the damage. It is a principle of accountability so basic that we apply it to everyday contexts. The accused does not sit as judge. The staff who held the credentials, the supervisors who approved their access, the ICT department that built the platform with the loophole they exploited, and the commission that certified the display of that register all now have an interest in the size of this scandal being declared small.

"Consider what INEC has done since the discovery. Its statement of October 27 named no cause. Three days later, its Director of ICT said on air that officers were compromised in several states, yet he also said he is still gathering evidence before reporting to the commission. Almost one week after that, Nigerians still do not know how many records are affected, which states, which local governments, which officers, or whether a single one of them has been suspended, let alone handed to the police."

Ezekwesili said INEC's defence that the register was only preliminary offered no comfort because the final register would be certified from it.

"If the preliminary register is poisoned and the investigation is conducted in secret by the poisoned institution, then the certified register will carry the poison into polling day. This is the same INEC whose conduct of the 2023 elections collapsed public trust among most Nigerians who were told then to trust the institution."

"Citizens are being told again to trust INEC in the face of colossal corruption of the voter register. Trust is not restored by the repetition of the word; it is restored by the removal of the substantial conflict of interest of allowing INEC to carry on with 'cleaning up' the massively corrupted voters register," she advised.

On what must be done to restore credibility to the voter register ahead of the 2027 elections, the founder of #FixPolitics and the School of Politics, Policy and Governance said only a caretaker rescue team of independent citizens could restore credibility to the register.

She, therefore, called for the immediate constitution of a caretaker rescue team, comprising independent citizens, eminent non-partisan Nigerians and technical experts, with a public mandate to take custody of the voter register clean-up and oversee the conduct of the 2027 elections at every stage.

"This is not a radical demand. It is the only proportionate one. When a bank's own staff are found to have forged its ledger, the regulator does not ask the same staff to audit the ledger. It brings in independent examiners, freezes the records, and publishes the findings. When the custodian of a nation's sovereignty confesses to the same crime, the sovereign, which is the people, must do no less."

"Every other proposal on the table today asks INEC to do better. Nigerians have heard that for a quarter of a century. Credibility cannot be rebuilt by the institution that destroyed it, because credibility is not a property of institutions. It is a judgment made by citizens. Citizens will only believe a register that citizens have been allowed to verify."

According to her, three reasons make the Caretaker Rescue Team the only viable option: independence is the cure for the specific problem; time does not permit a second failure; and the 2023 precedent closes the door on faith alone.

On the composition of the team, she suggested that it should include Nigerians whose integrity was not for sale and whose expertise was beyond question; representatives of civil society organisations with a track record of election observation and voter mobilisation; the Nigerian Bar Association; professional bodies in ICT and accounting; the academic community; and faith leaders and traditional institutions with moral standing across regions and religions.

She also proposed including observers from every registered political party, with the right to see everything but no right to control the process, as well as credible international observer missions as witnesses. However, she said serving or former INEC officials, public office holders, election candidates and party officials should be excluded.

She called on civil society organisations, professionals, faith leaders, young people who registered in their millions, the National Assembly, the judiciary and the international community to join the demand for the Caretaker Rescue Team immediately, rather than waiting until the register was certified in December by what she described as a guilty INEC or until the election results were announced.