As residents in Ekiti prepare for the June 18 governorship election, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it has detected 47,633 double voter registrations on its portal.

INEC’s Head, Information and Communication Technology, Titilayo Oderinde, disclosed this in Ado Ekiti on Saturday at a workshop organised for journalists in the state, ahead of the forthcoming governorship poll.

Mr 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.

While elucidating on the BVAS application and its significance to credible elections, he said that no individual could exercise double franchise during election, with the help of the ICT innovation.

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… 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,” Mr Oderinde said.

Also addressing the participants, the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Ekiti, Adeniran Tella, appealed to voters not to treat their PVCs as instruments for mere identification, saying that they were to be used to vote on election day.

(NAN)