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By Peter Duru, Makurdi
The Middle Belt Forum, MBF, has urged Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to take steps to invalidate and neutralise whatever the unscrupulous politicians buying up Permanent Voter Cards, PVCs, and harvesting numbers from the cards intend to achieve by the actions.
The National President of MBF, Dr. Bitrus Pogu who Monday was reacting to the assertion by the acting Chairman of INEC, Mohammed Harun that politicians were buying off PVCs and harvesting voter identification numbers urged the commission to act fast and save the country from unscrupulous politicians.
Dr. Pogu said, “the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, know exactly what the numbers and figures on the voters card means. We the ordinary people do not know what that means; to us it means you represent a number.
“But its use and functionality is known best by INEC. If some politicians are doing what he said they are doing, then it means that somebody somewhere has told those politicians the value of those things being harvested which they can use in rigging or in disenfranchised their opponents.
“So INEC should put in place something that is going to neutralise whatever they are doing; because technology is something that evolves. If politicians are buying off PVCs with a view to extracting numbers, they should get their technicians now to invalidate whatever input that may come from such exercise, and that will save Nigeria.
“We know that some desperate politicians will always want to beat the system no matter how perfect you may think it is, but certainly in spite of all these challenges including this one, the BVAS technology will give us something better that what we had in the past.
“Apart from this, we will also like INEC to raise an alarm like what they are trying to do or what they have done through INEC in Borno and some of the challenged areas where they are falsely trying to create ‘super camps’ as voting areas.
“For example, their is no part of Chibok that you cannot go and conduct election. No part of Chibok is occupied by insurgents, yet they want to create ‘super camps’. And Chibok is one of those I know that they have selected for that arrangement.
“A super camp is a place where a lot of polling units will be concentrated in one area and people from that area concern will all concentrate at the voting cluster and vote.
“What that means is that if a politician is not rich enough to transport all his supporters to the cluster, he is automatically disenfranchised.
This is being done in collusion with INEC and should be stopped.
“So while they are identifying the issue of purchase of PVCs and harvesting of numbers the issue of what INEC is doing in Borno which I believe is being influenced from outside, should also be stopped.
“Yes we know that there are Local Governments that have been occupied by insurgents, the State Assembly has indicated two, the other Local Government Areas still have their people residing there and can have their elections in their Local Governments.
“In Chibok which I mentioned, every part can be accessed and elections can hold there. We know it is not the same in Danbua because majority of the villages are deserted but it is not the same thing in Chibok.
“So for them to come up with that blanket decision is just a recipe for rigging and we believe that INEC is involved in this. So they should look at the situation because it is a recipe for rigging.”
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