Adamawa Group Raises Alarm Over Party Registration Fraud

Something is going wrong inside the APC’s e-registration exercise in Adamawa State, and a prominent civic group says it has the evidence to prove it.

The Adamawa United Forum, which describes itself as the umbrella organisation of all ethnic nationalities in the state, stepped before the press this week with a warning it says can no longer wait. Politicians and their allies, the group alleges, are systematically hijacking the membership registration process, using other people’s voter cards, NIN numbers, and VIN details to register citizens into political parties without their knowledge or consent.

The Forum’s Secretary General, Mathias Yohanna, signed the statement in which the group made clear that what is happening across Adamawa’s local governments is not isolated. Teams deployed by the Forum across the state have returned with consistent reports. Voter cards are being collected from families and individuals on the pretext of various errands. The real purpose, the group says, is to harvest the NIN and VIN numbers attached to those cards and use them to pad party membership figures.

Money is changing hands to make it happen. The Forum states that politicians and prospective candidates are already dispensing large sums to get people registered without their knowledge, in direct violation of the Electoral Act. Young men and women, many of them unemployed and looking for any income they can find, are reportedly being recruited to carry out the work on the ground.

The consequences for ordinary citizens are already showing up. Several residents who have attempted to register themselves into political parties of their own choosing have been turned away with a troubling message. Their cards, they are told, have already been used. By someone else. Without their permission.

The Forum acknowledged that the e-registration programme itself carries genuine merit. Formalising party membership through a digital process is, in principle, the kind of transparent, accountable system that Nigerian democracy needs. The problem, as the group sees it, is that the infrastructure for abuse arrived before any guardrails could be put in place.

Beyond the immediate fraud, the Adamawa United Forum raised a concern that carries further reach. National security, it warned, is already being compromised. The mass collection of NIN numbers for political purposes creates vulnerabilities that go well beyond any single election. Once that data is out, there is no simple way to call it back.

The Forum also took aim at the provision within the Electoral Act that allows party primaries to be conducted either by direct election or by consensus. That flexibility, the group argued, has become a doorway for godfatherism. Without a genuine election process, powerful interests simply install preferred candidates behind closed doors and present the outcome as settled. The Forum described it as one of the structural weaknesses that bad actors are already exploiting ahead of 2027.

The group’s call to action was directed squarely at the institutions responsible for protecting the integrity of what comes next. INEC, the Department of Civil Registration, and other electoral bodies were urged to treat the current warning signs seriously. The Forum made clear that its ward- and unit-level watchdogs across the state will remain active and will continue to monitor and document what they find.

There was also a pointed message for the politicians themselves. “It is not the large number of membership that makes them win”, the Forum stated, “but your party programme and electability and capacity.” Using criminal means to inflate registration numbers, the group added, will not change what voters decide when they step behind the curtain on election day.

For The Gazette News (Nigeria), this development adds a new and serious dimension to the build-up toward Adamawa’s 2027 elections. The voter registration fraud allegations, if left unaddressed by INEC and the relevant institutions, risk poisoning the well long before a single ballot is cast. And in a state that has worked hard to protect its democratic culture, that is a cost no one can afford to pay.