By Tabora Bojang
The Independent Electoral Commission has rejected allegations of voter registration in Mansakonko, Lower River Region, in an apparent response to concerns expressed over a widely circulated image on social media purportedly depicting IEC officials busy with what looks like registration machines and other tools.
The image, mainly circulating in opposition circles, showed a man and a woman alleged to be staff of the IEC with a machine used for registration of voters in the Lower River Region. According to the allegations, the IEC may be conducting secret registrations to manipulate the 2026 election in favour of the incumbent.
However, IEC spokesperson Pa Khan described these claims as “fake and malicious.” He said in the first place the people in the picture being circulated are not staff of the IEC, and nor is their machine similar to those used by the election body.
Khan further explained that the IEC is not engaged in any registration of voters.
“What we are doing currently is training our personnel on the new Election Act 2025. This is the law in place for conducting elections in this country. So it is important for our staff to be fully conversant with the law and that was the aim of this training in LRR,” Khan said.
He stressed that the training has “nothing to do” with voter registration.
The training, he said, started from January 17 and ran up to January 21 and targeted senior management staff and regional executives who are expected to conduct step down training of other junior staff.
“We are helping our staff to be conversant with the new law. So these allegations of voter registration are totally ridiculous. It is just fake news with malicious intent,” he said.
Khan said it is not possible for the IEC to just jump and conduct registration by itself. “Such an exercise must first be gazetted and we have to involve all stakeholders; the political parties, the observers, the media and so forth before registration is conducted,” he said.
“We are just doing our preparations for the elections and we are conducting a lot of training programmes ahead of time, so that by the time the election comes, all our staff and personnel would be conversant with the new laws and procedures,” Mr Khan stated.
He reiterated the IEC’s resolve in ensuring free and fair elections, and assured the public of strong safeguards to protect the integrity of the 2026 poll.
Meanwhile, another source told The Standard that the photo being circulated is of NPP members embarking on their party membership registration and not the IEC.
