Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has demanded full disclosure from the Independent National Electoral Commission over the leak of voter data from its Continuous Voter Registration database, warning that the breach has put the credibility of the 2027 general election “on trial” before campaigns have even begun.
In a statement Tuesday by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku said INEC’s admission that sensitive voter information was accessed through valid staff credentials and released without authorisation “raises more troubling questions than it resolves”.
INEC on Tuesday confirmed there was “no external breach of the CVR database, no hacking incident, and no unauthorised external access” to its ICT infrastructure. Instead, the Commission’s internal audit trail showed the information was accessed via official user credentials assigned to CVR personnel and leaked “without authority”.
“INEC’s statement has moved this issue beyond conjecture,” Atiku said. “That admission alone should concern every Nigerian”.
He argued that the absence of an external cyberattack “does not reduce the gravity of the incident but deepens it,” pointing to weak internal controls and possible deliberate political interference.
“What makes this entire episode impossible to ignore is that the information in question did not emerge from a whistleblower, an investigative journalist, or an anti-corruption agency. It was publicly released by Mr. Lere Olayinka, spokesman to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike”.
The leaked record belonged to Nollywood actor and National Democratic Coalition House of Representatives aspirant Emeka Ike, whose CVR details surfaced online shortly after he declared for an FCT seat.
INEC said the Department of State Services is now running a parallel probe into the breach. The Commission disclosed that its audit trail has already helped investigators trace the specific user account through which Ike’s record was retrieved, and that “relevant personnel had been questioned”.
Registration officers conducting the nationwide CVR are granted controlled access to parts of the database to register new applicants, process transfers, and update records. INEC said such access is “strictly restricted to official duties and withdrawable at the close of the exercise”.
The Commission maintains the leak involved a single voter file and “does not point to a wider compromise” of the system, which holds data on more than 90 million Nigerians.
Pattern of Electoral Concerns
Atiku linked the leak to broader questions about INEC’s handling of voter data and registration ahead of 2027.
His media adviser Paul Ibe previously demanded a probe into “contrived” voter registration figures after INEC reported about 393,000 new registrations in Osun State in just over a week, compared with fewer than 5,000 combined across at least five other states.
“Any attempt, any plan, or any agenda to inflate figures in particular states, or across the country, should be investigated,” Ibe said. “There should be an investigation so that no one is left in doubt, and so that the figures published by INEC are seen as genuine, not contrived”.
The African Democratic Congress had similarly described the Osun figures as “statistically implausible”.
INEC’s Wider CVR Crackdown
The Commission has been tightening controls after sanctioning 23 Registration Officers for creating fictitious voter entries during the last CVR exercise. INEC Chairman Professor Joash Ojo Amupitan (SAN), said each machine uses an access code tied to a staff email, creating an audit trail. In some cases, officers made “as many as 40 attempts or more to register one fake voter”.
INEC has also disowned fake CVR portals like https://register.inec-pvc.online/, warning that it “has not accredited any agency or organization to capture details of intending voters on its behalf”. The only legitimate site is https://cvr.inecnigeria.org.
Atiku said the leak exposes Nigeria’s electoral institutions to “political manipulation” and demanded to know:
1. How internal safeguards failed to prevent unauthorised disclosure;
2. What disciplinary and criminal actions will be taken against those responsible;
3. What new protocols INEC will implement to prevent recurrence before 2027.
The Cyber Security Experts Association of Nigeria said the incident “raises serious concerns under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023, particularly regarding data privacy, cybersecurity safeguards, and the protection of sensitive information”.
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