ON February 25, the day of Nigeria’s presidential and National Assembly elections, Paul Akinpelu shared a video of himself and his identical twin brother Peter at a polling unit.

The declarative caption on the video was, “We are voting here, no matter how long it takes.”

The video showed them spotting similar clothing styles. This is a norm with them. A look at their social media accounts shows that the musicians, who go with the name ‘Exceptional Twins’ on instragram, always dress alike.

They were to vote in South West Nigeria, Oyo State, in the Egbeda Local Government Area.

Long enough it took, Paul’s resolve to vote did not materialise.

Twenty-four hours after the post, in a phone conversation with The ICIR and later via Instagram, Peter said his brother, Paul, could not vote.

“Only one of us could vote because their machine indicated that the same face had already been scanned, as we look so much alike. That was after one of us did his. So, they suggested fingerprints, but it didn’t work also,” Peter stated.

He said they waited and made multiple attempts, but all to no avail.

This is not an isolated incident.

Across the country, in Kaduna, Hussaini Muhammad Kabir and his identical twin Hassan were experiencing a similar challenge. One of them could not vote.

Hussaini, on his twitter account @hussainimk shared his experience. He said, “So I couldn’t vote because my twin voted before me. Unfortunately for me, the machine indicated that the same face was scanned. Fingerprint didn’t work also.”

He accompanied the tweet with a photo of their cards, which were eerily similar – image and data. Some twitter users who gave it a cusory look assumed it was the same person and information.

Like the Akinpelus, the Kabirs are not only identical, they also dress alike, as can be seen from images on their Instagram page.

In a follow-up conversation with The ICIR, Hussaini said, “I didn’t experience such during registering my permanent voters card (PVC).”

He, however, said they had encountered a similar issue at an airport while their international passports were being screened.

Another twin, Hussainah Uthman, stated in his comment section that the issue affected her and her sister as they were not able to get their PVCs. She wrote, “ Same thing happened to my sis, and I @HassanahUthman even worst cause we couldn’t get our PVC cause of the identical face thingy.”

READ MORE HERE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/2023-election-disenfranchised-for-being-identical-twins/

Fingerprint that should have been able to identify both of them did not work. What a country

Brittbreaker:
Fingerprint that should have been able to identify both of them did not work. What a country

👍👍👍

N