No NIN database, no candidate: The Electoral Act clause that could shake up 2027

In May 2022, the APC primary that produced Bola Tinubu as presidential candidate was conducted amid widespread allegations of delegate manipulation. Names on lists did not match faces in halls. Delegates who had never attended a congress voted. In Rivers, two parallel primaries produced two different sets of results.

The PDP’s own primary that year was no different. Court cases over who actually participated, who was validly nominated, and whose name legitimately appeared on what register dragged on for months.

The common thread across virtually every disputed primary in Nigeria’s recent history is the same. Nobody could definitively answer the question of who was actually a member of the party.

The Electoral Act 2026 has decided that can no longer be acceptable. And it has handed the answer to that question to technology.

What the Electoral Act 2026 says about party membership

Section 77(2) of the Electoral Act 2026 requires every registered political party to maintain a digital register of its members.

"The register must contain, for each member: name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, National Identification Number, and photograph, in both hard and soft copy."

Section 77(4) requires each party to make that register available to INEC not later than 21 days before the date fixed for any party primary, congress, or convention.

Joash Ojo Amupitan – INEC Chairman

Section 77(5) is the provision with the sharpest teeth: only members whose names are contained in the submitted register shall be eligible to vote or be voted for in party primaries, congresses, and conventions.

Section 77(6) removes any room for manoeuvre: a party shall not use any other register.

Section 77(7) delivers the consequence that makes all of the above real: a party that fails to submit the membership register within the stipulated time shall not be eligible to field a candidate for that election.

Not a fine. Not a warning.

No candidate.

What this means in practice

Nigeria currently has 21 registered political parties. Each one is now legally required to build, maintain, and submit to INEC a biometric-linked digital database of every single one of its members, tied to the National Identification Number issued by the National Identity Management Commission.

The implications are significant on multiple levels.

For the parties themselves, this is a technology procurement mandate that most of them are wholly unprepared for.

Building a compliant membership database requires software infrastructure, data entry capacity across 36 states and the FCT, photograph collection, NIN verification integration, and ongoing maintenance.

The APC and PDP, with their national structures, may be able to manage this. For smaller parties, and Nigeria has 19 of them, the financial and technical burden is enormous.

For NIMC, the body that issues and manages NINs, this represents a significant new demand on its verification infrastructure. Cross-referencing party membership databases against the national NIN database at scale, across 21 parties and potentially millions of members, is not a trivial technical exercise. NIMC has not publicly indicated it has been consulted on or is prepared for this workload.

The data security question

A NIN-linked membership database is not just a party administration tool. It is a sensitive personal data repository containing the biometric identifiers, addresses, and political affiliations of potentially millions of Nigerians.

Nigeria’s Data Protection Act 2023 applies. Political affiliation is classified as sensitive personal data under the Act, attracting the highest level of protection. Each party building such a database becomes a data controller with significant legal obligations – consent requirements, data breach notification duties, retention limits, and security standards.

Has any of Nigeria’s 21 registered parties conducted a Data Protection Impact Assessment for this database? Has the Nigeria Data Protection Commission issued guidance on compliance? Has INEC specified the technical security standards a compliant register must meet?

As of the time of this report, none of these questions have been publicly answered.

A centralised, mandatory digital register also creates a new attack surface. A party’s membership database, once built, becomes a target for manipulation by internal factions seeking to add or remove names before a primary, for external interference, and for the kind of quiet administrative sabotage that Nigerian political history suggests is entirely plausible.

The law says only names in the submitted register count. Which means controlling the register is now the same as controlling the primary.

Section 77(4) requires the register to be submitted 21 days before any primary. The next major election cycle is 2027. Party primaries for that cycle will begin in 2026.

That means the clock on compliance is not as distant as it might seem. Parties that have not begun building compliant digital membership registers are already running behind.

INEC has not published implementation guidelines for Section 77. No compliance deadline beyond the 21-day submission window has been communicated. And no party has publicly disclosed what progress, if any, it has made toward building a NIN-linked membership database.

The provision that could most fundamentally change how Nigerian political parties operate is sitting in the law, unimplemented, undiscussed, and largely unnoticed.

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