The
All Progressives Congress (APC) has accused the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) of a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise voters in states
under its control.
TheCable carries this story:
Condemning
the three-day distribution of the Permanent Voter’s Cards (PVCs) in 12 states,
APC alleged that most registered voters could not collect their PVCs as a
result of INEC’s “programmed incompetence to swing the elections in favour of
the PDP”.
The
party called on Attahiru Jega, a professor and chairman of INEC to set up a
panel to look into the exercise.
“There
is no doubt that this programmed incompetence has emanated from just one
source, the ICT unit of INEC, with the intent of sabotaging the PVC
distribution process in key states,” APC said in a statement issued by Lai
Mohammed, its national publicity secretary, on Sunday.
“This
is highly suspicious, against the background of available information that the
PDP-led federal government is working to disenfranchise voters in opposition
strongholds during the forthcoming polls.
“If
INEC is to organize a free, credible and transparent election next February, it
must quickly return to the drawing board to fashion out how to ensure that all
Nigerians who are eligible to vote are able to do so without hindrance, and
also purge itself of the fifth columnists within its ranks who are bent on
sabotaging the elections.
“We
know their two-pronged game plan to skew the 2015 general elections in favour
of the PDP. One is to mess up the collection of PVCs in states with the highest
number of registered voters which also fall under the control of the APC, with
the aim of suppressing the votes in those states.
“The
second approach is to programme the voter’s registration exercise in those
states, which also have a high number of people who are due for registration,
so the states will not meet the requirement to participate in next year’s
election since INEC would not have finished the voter’s registration process in
those states.”
The
party further accused the electoral body of hatching a plan to postpone the
election in APC states to a later date in order to enable the federal
government perpetrate widespread intimidation and prevent free and fair
elections.
On
Saturday, Bola Tinubu, the national leader of the party alleged that INEC is
planning to rig the 2015 election in favour of President Goodluck Jonathan and
the PDP.
Meanwhile,
INEC has reacted to the allegation, denying that it conspired with any group to
undermine the exercise.
The
commission said it was making efforts to resolve the challenges experienced
during the PVC distribution, assuring that it is committed towards
ensuring that every properly registered voter get their permanent voter card.
“It
is completely false that INEC has removed the records of 1.4 million persons
from the register of voters compiled in 2011 in Lagos State,” Kayode Idowu, the
chief press secretary to INEC chairman, said in a statement on Sunday.
“It
is true that at the end of the 2011 general registration exercise, the
commission announced a figure of 6.1 million registrants in the state. But when
that data was subjected to the Automated Fingerprints Identification System
software, 82,892 multiple registrations were eliminated.
“Also,
there was the technical challenge of loss of data and incomplete data affecting
about one million records – mostly in 1,792 polling units that were identified
and made public before the present exercise. That was why and how the
Post-Business Rule figure for Lagos State (on the basis of which PVCs were
printed) came down to about 4.6 million registrants.”
Idowu
added that INEC has made provision for eligible persons whose PVCs could not be
printed due to data loss or defective data.
He said the data of those in that category would
be recaptured between November 12 and November 17.
No comments:
Post a Comment