The Independent National Electoral Commission has urged Nigerians to be watchful at the polling places for foreigners who pose as Nigerians in order to cast ballots ahead of the general elections in 2023.

Security personnel were urged by the commission to detain foreigners detected in possession of permanent voter cards.

Festus Okoye, the INEC National Commissioner for Information, revealed this on Friday in an interview with the Channels TV show “Politics Today.”

He said, “In terms of non-Nigerians voting, only validly registered voters will be in a position to vote during the 2023 general election, and the Immigration Service, anytime they see any individual who claims to be a Nigerian and has voter card, they should arrest the person and make the voter card available to the commission.

“We cancel those registrations. So, Nigerians should be on a look out; if any non-Nigerian approaches any of the polling unit on election day, they should indicate, and the security agencies will do the needful.”

Meanwhile, the INEC said it would put a premium on the security and welfare of corps members on duty during the 2023 general elections, its chairman, Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu, assured on Friday.

According to him, Nigeria cannot conduct any successful election without the active participation of corps members as ad hoc staff.

Yakubu stated these during a meeting with the acting Director-General of the National Youth Service Corps, Christy Uba, in Abuja.

He said the meeting was to officially smoothen arrangements for the participation of corps members as ad-hoc staff in the forthcoming general elections as NYSC members form the multitude of ad-hoc staff for the electoral umpire.

Yakubu said it was practically impossible to conduct elections in Nigeria without the support of the corps members.

He said, “The truth is that INEC can’t conduct elections successfully without the support of the NYSC. The NYSC members are our most reliable, readily available, educated, patriotic and the largest number of election duty staff in the country.

“We’ll continue to place premium on the security of corps members on election day, and for this reason we will also extend insurance cover in case of injury and other emergencies for all corps members involved in election duty.

“Working with the security agencies, we’ll also extend protection and security to the NYSC members lodges when they are deployed to the field on election day because we have had some unhappy experiences before when some hoodlums raided the corpers lodges in some places while the NYSC members were on election duty.