Ahead of the June 18 governorship election in Ekiti State, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has discovered 47,633 double voter registrations on its portal, IgbereTV reports
The INEC’s Head of Information and Communication Technology, Titilayo Oderinde, disclosed this at a workshop organised for journalists on Saturday in Ado Ekiti.
Oderinde said the registration of those affected had been invalidated with the aid of Bimodal Voter Authentication System (BVAS) invented by INEC in order to prevent double voting during the election.
He said: “During the just-concluded continuous voter registration exercise, a total of 124,963 people registered in Ekiti.
“However, it will surprise you that when the figure was subjected to BVAS scrutiny, a total of 47,633 people were discovered to have registered twice and removed from the total number that registered.
“This is not peculiar to a particular gender, as the offence was committed by both genders.
“But, I see no reason why people should be doing this when they can approach the commission for migration of their polling units, even if they have left their environment for other locations.”
Also addressing the participants, the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Ekiti, Dr. Adeniran Tella, appealed to voters not to treat their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) as instruments for mere identification, saying that they were to be used to vote on election day.
“PVCs are not designed as identification cards. They are for voting. We want to do away with this voter apathy and we are starting with the Ekiti election,” he said.
