Over 13,000 new names added to special voters list – EC

Deputy Commissioner in charge of operations Sulley Amadu said the new figure is now hovering around 127,934 voters, up from the 114,813 list of special voters announced earlier.

The new list includes 500 new recruits who have just passed out, Amadu added.

Speaking on Joy FM’s news analysis program Newsfile, Saturday, Mr Amadu allayed fears of wrongdoing and assured that the EC will provide the political parties the new list of voters before the special voting day.

The special voting will take place on December 4, three days before the actual voting day on December 7.

It will allow officials-EC officials, journalists, security officers- who may not be able to cast their ballot on December 7 due to the roles they will play on election day to do so on the special voting day.

The creation of the Special Voters list ended on October 28, 42 clear days to the election in accordance to the laws regulating the elections.

However, the IGP issued a memo to his regional commanders, a copy of which was leaked to the media, in which he asked all the commanders to liaise with the various EC heads in their various jurisdictions to add a new list of police recruits to the already compiled special voters list.

That request triggered a new controversy and suspicion with the opposition political parties raising questions.

They did not understand why the IGP will, on the blind side of political parties, be making that request to the EC, at a time when the special voters period had elapsed.

They also wondered why recruits who were yet to pass out will be used to police the December elections.

But explaining the reasons why the voters list had increased the Deputy Commissioner, Amadu Sulley said on Newsfile, new EC officials recruited online had to be exported to other places to work and they for which reason they have to vote on the special voters day.

“This time we recruited the officials online and at the point of recruitment we realised that some of the officials had to be exported to other places to enable them to work,” he explained.

He said there were areas in the country that needed the calibre of the people who have been recruited and if they were to move to those areas they had to vote on a special voting day.

“Secondly we do not want to compromise the security of the process and we needed the security people more.

“Recently some about 500 recruits passed out so the police made a request. We needed to get them to make sure we have enough people who will manning the polling stations and who will be doing patrols in flash point areas.

“So these numbers had to be added which changed the figures,” he pointed out.