The All Progressives Congress (APC) has described Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) distribution of Permanent Voters’ Card (PVC) of being intentionally programmed to fail in order to disenfranchise voters in the states with the highest number of voters.
National Publicity Secretary of the party, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in a statement issued in Lagos on Sunday said the shoddy distribution of the PVCs in 12 states, which rounded off on Sunday shows INEC has been engaged in a programmed incompetence to swing the elections in favour of the PDP, in what is a clear case of rigging at source.
“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, hence we are calling on INEC Chairman Attahiru Jega to institute an internal inquiry into the botched exercise with a view to fishing out the fifth columnists who are behind the sabotage, meting out the necessary punishment to them,” APC said.
The party queried why most of the affected states (Kaduna, Kano, Edo, Plateau, Ogun, Imo, Borno, Rivers, Lagos, Nasarawa, Katsina, Niger) are either opposition strongholds or harbour the highest huge number of voters.
”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.
”Going by the poor state of the registration machines which cannot register more than 50 voters a day each; the non-available or non-functioning printers and other problems, INEC cannot obviously meet the deadline to register eligible voters in those states before the next elections,” the party said.
