Benjamin Bano-Bioh, Director of Electoral Services at the Electoral Commission (EC), has clarified that the 2020 and 2023 transfer lists were added to this year’s list to help track voters.
He explained that the move is part of the EC’s efforts to create individual files for each voter.
This clarification comes after the National Democratic Congress (NDC) alleged that around 243,000 names were unlawfully added to the 2024 voters’ transfer list.
In an interview with Umaru Sanda Amadu on Eyewitness News, Bano-Bioh also mentioned that the commission had printed lists of absent voters from 2020.
He further stated that the EC had informed the NDC about these categories of transfers and was prepared to segregate them for the party upon request.
The EC Director emphasized that the commission has nothing to hide.
“Previously, we did not have any file; all of them were dumped into one file in the system. This time around, we are giving a file to each voter so that we can critically trace the movement of voters. In doing that, we printed from 2020 all the transfer voters, the transfers that have taken place for each polling station.
“Apart from the transfer, the absent voters were also printed from 2020. We did that to identify the movement of each voter, and as I indicated, we have a file for each voter. So the transfer list that we provided involves transfers made in 2020, 2023, and 2024.”
“We told the NDC that we have these categories of transfers. If you want 2024, we can disaggregate it and give it to you, but for administrative purposes, that is what we did.
“Let me tell you, we use the voters register to vote, not the transfer list. It is the voters register that we use to vote and not the transfer list or the absent voters. What we did was to help us track the movement of the voters.”
“…As a commission, we have nothing to hide. Even though it is an administrative measure, we wanted them to know, and when they asked, we explained to them that is that,” he stated.
