The Independent National Electoral Commission has exposed a new method of vote buying, allegedly being devised by politicians to manipulate the voting process in the forthcoming general elections.
INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, disclosed this yesterday at the presentation of the Voter Register for next month’s general elections to political parties in Abuja.
Yakubu said the commission had received credible information that “some partisan actors were now going round buying up Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) from voters, or financially inducing them to collect the Voter Identification Numbers (VIN) on their PVCs.
“In some instances, telephone numbers and details of bank accounts of voters have been collected. By collecting the PVCs, their intention may be to deprive the voters of voting since no one can vote without the PVC.
“By collecting their phone numbers and bank details, the intention is to induce voters by electronic transfer of funds to their accounts since it will be difficult to buy votes at polling units.
“By collecting the VINs, they may be acting on the mistaken notion that our system can be hacked into and the Card Readers somehow preloaded ahead of election and compromised. We want to reassure Nigerians that we are aware of the new tricks. It is a futile effort.
“We will work with the security agencies to deal with the violators of our electoral laws, including those who may be trying to compromise our staff responsible for making the PVCs available for collection by legitimate voters.”
Speaking further, Professor Yakubu said the commission had responded to the menace of vote buying in three ways namely; the alteration of the configuration of polling units by moving the ballot boxes closer to the voting cubicles, thus making it difficult for voters to expose their marked ballot papers.
“We have introduced a partial ban on the use of mobile phone and other photographic devices by voters while in the voting cubicles, and thirdly, we are introducing the rolling and flattening of ballot papers by voters before casting them into the ballot boxes.”
Yakubu disclosed that after the mandatory display of the register in all polling units nationwide for claims and objections from November 6 to November 12, 2018, the final register for the 2019 general elections stood at 84,004,084 voters.
“This is the register that will be presented to each political party at today’s meeting. It is also the same register that will be available at each polling unit nationwide on election day,” the INEC boss said.
On the number of polling units, Yakubu said, there was no change in the number of polling units and voting points used for the 2015 general elections and the 2016 for area council elections in the FCT.
He also disclosed that the Commission had printed and delivered the PVCs to the states for collection, urging all registered voters to approach any of its local government area offices and other designated collection centres nationwide, to pick up their cards in person, not by proxy.
Incident form abolished
Yakubu, who re-emphasised that the Smart Card Readers would be used for the 2019 general elections for accreditation of voters, further disclosed that the register of voters has been modified.
According to him, where the biometric authentication failed, the voter would be required to thumbprint a box next to his/her picture on the register, and to enter his/her mobile telephone number before proceeding to vote.
“The Commission has modified the Register of Voters for the 2019 general elections accordingly. Consequently, the separate Incident Form used in previous elections which is only completed by the Presiding Officer without the involvement of the voter, is now abolished.
“Similarly, the claim that the Card Reader has been enhanced to recapture voters’ fingerprints at polling units and automatically overwrite the biometric record on our database, is untrue and should be disregarded.’’
Yakubu reminded the leaders of political parties that the deadline for submission of party agent for Presidential and National Assembly elections remains February 1, while that of governorship, state Assembly and FCT Area Council elections is fixed for February 16.
Breakdown of eligible voters
Meanwhile, INEC Director of Voter Register, Mr. Iro Gambo, while making presentation on the Voter Register, said the South-south had 12, 841, 279 registered voters, representing 15. 29 per cent of 84,004,084 total number of registered voters.
Gambo added that North-central has 13, 366,070 representing 15.91 per cent; South-east 10,057, 130 registered voters, representing 11.91 per cent, and South-west 16,292, 212, representing 19.39 of the total registered voters.
The North-west, Gamabo further said, has 20,158,100 representing 24 per cent, while North-east has 11, 289, 293 representing 13.44 per cent of the total registered voters.
On the gender breakdown of the voters, Gambo said that men constitute 39, 598,645 representing 47.14 per cent of total registered voters, while the remaining 44,405, 439 making up 52.86 per cent of the voters, are women.
Commission to train 1m personnel
Meanwhile, the Commission has disclosed plan to train over one million electoral staff and ad-hoc personnel for the conduct of the February 2019 general elections.
Chairman, Board of Electoral Institute (BEI), Mr. Solomon Soyebi, made the disclosure yesterday in Calabar, Cross River state, at the training workshop for State Training Officers and Assistant State Training Officers on Cascade Training Implementation for 2019 elections.
The workshop was organised by INEC in collaboration with the International Foundation of Electoral System (IFES).
Soyebi explained that 850,000 electoral personnel would be trained as polling unit officials, while 150,000 would consist of Civil Society Organisations and officials of security agencies officials.
“With just about 39 days to the first election and about 53 days to the second one, it is very important that we train our people adequately. For the poll officials, we are going to train over 850,000 personnel.
“When you aggregate the Civil Society Organisations and security officials, we will be talking of over one million personnel and each of them has to be trained.
“Today’s training is for the poll officials, who will go back to their states to transmit the training to the ad-hoc staff ahead of the election,” he said.
He added that for the first time, the institute was organising a training which would involve the inclusiveness of special groups like the people with disabilities.
“The commission is very friendly with People Living with Disabilities, not just that alone; we are gender sensitive. We have special groups and the people with disability are part of them,’’ he added.
Also speaking, INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner in Cross River state, Dr Frankland Briyai, said the training was designed by the commission to ensure that personnel for the elections were thoroughly trained.
Briyai charged the participants to take the training seriously, to efficiently and effectively implement the cascade training for the polls in their respective states.
He gave assurance that INEC and security agencies would ensure crisis-free polls in the state. In his remark, Acting Director-General of the Electoral Institute, Dr Umar Idris, said the training would provide a veritable opportunity for all the loose ends to be tightened.
He implored the participants to brace up for the task ahead by being proactive in every step of the training, to ensure that all states were on the same page.
Also speaking, Chief Executive Officer of Albino Foundation, Mr Jake Epelle, noted that no true democracy could be achieved without the inclusion of all critical stakeholders in the society into the electoral process.
