'Let’s use NPP’s technology to expunge foreign names'

General Secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress [NDC], Mr. Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, has asked the opposition New Patriotic Party [NPP] to volunteer its facial detective machine for the Electoral Commission to expunge foreign names from Ghana’s voters register.

According to him, instead of calling for a total new voters register due to the opposition NPP’s claim of Togolese and other border countries featuring in Ghana’s voters register, the suggestion of the NPP should not be a new voters register but rather to subject the voters register for facial detection to expunge foreign names from the register.

The NPP has alleged over 76, 286 people with same names and pictures are in the voters registers of both Ghana and Togo.

Presenting what he termed “a damning revelation” which should trigger the need for a new voters register in Ghana before the 2016 elections, the vice presidential candidate of the main opposition party Dr Mahamudu Bawumia said the uncovering of these foreign nationals in the register is just “10% of the search.”

“Our investigative team obtained the Togo voters register which was publicly displayed prior to the 2015 Togolese elections. Using facial biometric recognition technology, the system has found 76,286 potential matches of the same people, with the same names and faces on the Ghanaian as well as Togolese voters registers; some 2000 of which we present in the power point presentation,” Dr Bawumia stressed at a news conference last Tuesday.

Commenting on the opposition party’s demand, General Mosquito as he’s affectionately called said on Okay Fm’s Ade Akye Abia Morning Show that the NPP's call cannot be accepted if it has been able to come up with the best way to expunge foreign names from the voters register.

“If we are lucky that the NPP has found the best way to screen the voters register to determine foreign names then this will help the nation; and so why should we compile a new voters register? The best thing is to apply the same facial biometric recognition technology on the voters register and smoke out all the Togolese, Burkinabes and the Ivoirians from the register,” he urged.

“But if they say their machine has detected foreign names, and so we should go for a new voters register then I don’t understand them…we should apply the machine on the voters register to smoke out the foreign names instead of new voters register,” he suggested.

He, therefore, assigned the opposition NPP to come out in their finding how foreign names found their way into Ghana’s voters register and the best way the new voters register can prevent foreigners from registering.