The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) registered no fewer than 63,981,460 Nigerians as voters between January 29 and February 5, its Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, said yesterday.

The figure is based on returns from 85 per cent of registration centres across the country, he said.

He spoke at the Nigeria Pre-Election Colloquium with the theme: "Nigeria 2011 elections: Building confidence, enhancing credibility," in Abuja.

Jega accepted an offer of collaboration from the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) in the prosecution of people found to have done multiple registration.

According to him, INEC’s initial expectation of registering 70 million Nigerians was based on projections from the 2006 Population Census figures.

He said: "We have been surprised by the level of turnout and the large numbers that registered in the end. In fact, with most (not all) of the data now reported by the states, we have by this morning registered 63,981,460 Nigerians for the coming elections.

"I wish to appeal to all Nigerians to also turn out in their numbers for the verification that will take place from February 14 to 18. The list will be displayed in all polling units during the period for the public to register their claims and objections.

"This exercise did not take place in the immediate past and that partly explained the problems of the now old voter register. This is, therefore, an opportunity for people to deal with irregular entries in the register," he said.

Jega added: "Perhaps you know an underage person who registered or somebody who procured double registration or any other fraudulent practice. This is an opportunity to tell the Commission and we promise to deal with such cases expeditiously, according to the law."

On the capability of the commission to detect multiple registration, he said: "We took time to carefully specify the hardware we needed in order to standardise them and also audit the equipment supplied ..."

Jega noted that barely seven weeks to the National Assembly election, INEC is confronted with challenges of security, procurement, deployment, training, nomination of candidates, voter education, improving balloting processes, organising election observation, preventing electoral fraud and transmitting results.

He said the Inter-agency Consultative Committees on Election Security would help curb the serious security challenges, adding: "We are already seeing the ugly head of electoral violence across the country, not only in areas that are experiencing communal and political violence unrelated to the elections like the Jos Plateau, Niger Delta and Borno states, but in other relatively quiet parts of the country. Indeed, it is clear that pre-existing conflict processes are inevitably exacerbated during elections, where security is weak and where political actors do not exercise restraint."