Over 500,000 Ghanaians have registered for voters’ ID so far – NPP

The Electoral Commission has registered over five hundred thousand voters two days after the commencement of the voter registration exercise.

According to the Evans Nimako, the Director of Research and Elections of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), the said figure is from the party’s own collation of the number of voters’ captured in the ongoing exercise.

The Commission began the compilation of the new voters’ register on Tuesday, June 30, 2020.

Speaking on The Point of View on Citi TV, Mr. Nimako said per their data, 520,000 so far been registered and issued with their ID cards.

He thus described the process as a success.

“I think day one and day two, what we have seen so far is encouraging, however, I am not too surprised by the position of Peter Boamah Otukunor [who was also on The Point of View]. This is a program they never supported. I’m surprised that as of now, checking from our database, we are having almost five hundred and twenty thousand people registered.”

The National Coordinator of the Coalition of Election Observers CODEO Albert Arhin speaking on the same show said the registration during the second day of the registration process improved compared to the first day.

“On the first day, we said we were not happy with the adherence of the protocols of COVID-19 but I can say that as of Wednesday, our people were reporting that it has improved tremendously. The places where there were no washing of hands, people who were not observing the one-meter distance among others. I will say about 92 percent of the machines that were in use are working very well.”

Meanwhile, a deputy General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Peter Boamah Otokunor insisted the exercise has so far been marred by several challenges.

He indicated that the challenges are likely to deny potential registrants the opportunity to be on the electoral roll.

“The process has generally been unsatisfactory because of the ill-preparedness of the Electoral Commission. From day one, we knew that we were going to go into this crisis, and as we speak according to the plan of the commission we were supposed to have about 6700 centres to start with but now we are doing some little over 3300,” he said.

Meanwhile, the registration goes into day three today.

The registration, which will be conducted across six thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight clusters simultaneously will be completed on August 6, 2020.