Did Gambian electoral commission issue voter ID to Senegalese nationals?

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Yankuba Corr

Claim: An Instagram user claimed that the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) issued a voter’s card to a Senegalese national with the name Adama Boudal.

Verdict: False. The shared voter’s card differs from the one the IEC typically issues to voters. 

Full Text

Bubacarr Keita, an Instagram activist, posted that non-Gambians are being issued voter cards ahead of the 2026 presidential election.

He attached a picture of a Senegalese national identity card alongside a Gambian voter’s card.

Bobzkeita wrote, “As I said yesterday, when we said Every Youth Must Vote 2026, we meant Gambians, not foreigners. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

As of June 22, 2026, the post (archived here) had received 325 likes and four comments. While some users believe the claim is true, others resorted to arguing over its authenticity. 

For example, Baldeh Ibra said, “That’s not the same person.” 

Zenunisamir00, another user, replied. He said, “That’s the same person. What’s wrong with you?” 

DUBAWA conducted this verification to set the record straight. 

Verification 

Section 39(1) of the 1997 Constitution of The Gambia guarantees the right to vote only to Gambian citizens aged 18 years or older. Similarly, Section 13(1) of the Elections Act 2025 provides that only Gambian citizens who are at least 18 years old and are residents of, or were born in, a constituency are eligible for registration as voters. 

We observed that the two ID cards Bobzkeita shared had different names. While “Jallow Adama” was written on the voter ID, “Adama Boudal” was written on the national ID. This was the first red flag.

To further verify the authenticity of the claim, we obtained an original Gambian voter ID issued by the IEC during the 2026 voter registration. We conducted a side-by-side comparison with the version allegedly issued to the Senegalese. We discovered that the general design elements of the viral one were inconsistent with those of a typical Gambian voter ID. 

One, the address. On the voter ID allegedly issued to the Senegalese, the address section was labelled “statingue address.” However, the one issued by the IEC had “street/home address” instead. 

Second, three letters “GMB” were added to the voter number on the ID under scrutiny. On the contrary, a typical Gambian voter ID has only numbers, not letters. 

Conclusion 

The discrepancies in name, address, and ID numbers indicate that the ID purportedly issued to a Senegalese is fabricated. While sharing a similar look, its design elements differ from the standard one recently issued to Gambians ahead of the 2026 presidential election. The claim is, therefore, false. 

This report was produced under the 2026 Kwame Karikari Fact-checking and OSINT Fellowship, co-hosted by DUBAWA and the Digital Technology, Artificial Intelligence, and Information Disorder Analysis Centre (DAIDAC), with support from the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID).