Double registration allegation: EC officials advised me to re-register – NPP communication director

The Director of Communication for the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Richard Ahiagbah, has clarified issues concerning allegations of him committing the electoral offence of registering twice in the country’s voters' register – known as double registration.

He explained that although it is true that he already has a voter's ID card, which he obtained during the 2020 voters' registration exercise, he discovered that his name was not on the register when he went to vote in the 2020 elections.

Ahiagbah, who made these remarks in an interview on Neat FM on Tuesday, May 14, 2024, said that officials of the Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC), including the regional director of the commission for the Volta Region, advised him to re-register to get his name on the register.

"When the registration (of voters) was opened in 2023, I was monitoring the process in the Volta Region, and so I went to the office of the regional director (of EC) together with my team to introduce ourselves and also discuss the registration.

"So, when we were about to leave, I told him (the regional director) what happened to me in 2020 and asked him to check whether my name was on the register because I did not want a repeat of what transpired," he said.

He added, "So, he called his IT director, and after checks of my biometrics, he said my name was not on the register, so I asked what I should do, and he said I should do a re-registration or an inclusion. But I left the office without doing the re-registration or inclusion and went about my monitoring duties."

The NPP communications director said that he raised the same concern at the centre where he registered during his monitoring activities, and he was advised by the EC officials there to either re-register or apply for inclusion.

He flatly rejected assertions by members of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) that he deliberately sought to enter his name into the voters' register twice.

He said that the claims do not make sense because he did not go to a different registration centre but to the same centre where he registered in 2020.

He accused the NDC of doing all it could to make the NPP look bad in the eyes of Ghanaians.

Richard Ahiagbah's remarks come after he was accused, by members of the NDC, of committing the crime of double registration when he attempted to register at a Ketu South electoral registration centre on Saturday, May 11, 2024.

A video of the incident, sighted by GhanaWeb, showed a chaotic registration centre with some NDC agents being heard in the background questioning how Richard Ahiagbah was able to vote in the 2020 presidential election if he was not a registered voter.

After the incident, purported evidence emerged, showing that Ahiagbah voted in the 2020 elections, albeit without his name printed on the voter roll.

A photo of the voter register used during the election also showed that the details of Ahiagbah, including his supposed voter identification number, name, age, date of birth, and polling station code, were written by an electoral official at the bottom of the register with a pen before he proceeded to cast his vote.

In reaction to Saturday's development, the opposition National Democratic Congress demanded the arrest of Richard Ahiagbah for the offence of double registration.

The Deputy National Communication Officer of the NDC, Malik Basintale, in an interview with Metro TV, called for his immediate arrest.

"We will not tolerate this attempt by the NPP to use dubious means to steal the mandate of Ghanaians in the 7th December elections. We have the challenge form with us, and we are calling on the Ghana Police Service to arrest him immediately. If they fail to do so, we will initiate a citizen's arrest.

"We will not stand by and watch the NPP engage in illegal activities to rig the elections. We will do everything within our power to ensure that the will of the people is respected," he told News Night Anchor Michael Addo on Metro TV.

Watch his remarks in the video below:



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