Politicians Device New Strategy To Rig Elections – INEC

INEC Chairman Mahmood Yakubu has raised an alarm disclosing a new method adopted by politician to engage in vote buying designed to undermine the voting processes in the forth coming elections, Mahmood Yakubu disclosed this during the presentation ceremony of the Voter Register for the 2019 general elections to political parties in Abuja.

Yakubu said that the commission has been reliably informed that some political parties have sent their agents out to secure voters cards front legitimate card holders, according to him, these party agents were going around and buying up Permanent Voter Cards from voters by financially inducing them to part with their PVC.

“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 and the Card Readers somehow preloaded ahead of the election and compromised.

“We want to reassure Nigerians that we are aware of the new tricks. It is a futile effort.

Yakubu said that to checkmate this ugly trend

“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.’’

“Secondly, we have introduced a partial ban on the use of mobile phone and other photographic devices by voters while in the voting cubicles.

“Thirdly, we are introducing the rolling and flattening of ballot papers by voters before casting them into the ballot boxes.’’