Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Mahmood Yakubu has warned that the commission would arrest and prosecute anyone that engages in vote-buying in the September 22 governorship election in Osun State.
He gave the warning at the commission’s quarterly consultative meeting with political parties on Friday in Abuja, saying that the commission would no longer take lightly, issue of vote-buying which had become a recurring decimal in the country’s elections.
According to him: “We are witnessing an ugly trend of vote-buying in recent elections in the country; this is giving our democracy a bad name.
“There is difference between democracy – government of the people, made by the people and for the people and plutocracy, which is government by the rich.
“We are going to make Osun governorship election a big statement by arresting and prosecuting vote buyers. We can’t carry this ugly trend to 2019 elections.”
He urged political parties to adhere strictly to the commission’s timetable and schedule of activities for the 2019 general elections.
The chairman advised political parties to ensure that their primaries are credible, saying credible and peaceful elections started with political parties, which are the cornerstone of our democracy.
He said: “Nobody can aspire for elective position without a political party. We conduct the election, while parties produce the candidates, and that is why conducting credible party primaries is essential.”
He said that INEC had so far received invitation letters from 60 political parties out of the 91 registered political parties, to monitor their primaries.
Yakubu added that the commission would only recognise notice of primaries from parties’ national executive committees.
“Notification should not come from branches; avoid incessant changes to party primaries and strife to eliminate rancour primaries.
“We incur cost in the process of monitoring party primaries; we don’t have all the resources in the world to monitor party primaries.
“Primaries should be resolved without litigations; we are still battling with litigations from party primaries conducted in 2014; we have been dragged to conduct 680 times over party primaries. “Political parties are key to our democracy, some parties change names of candidates who genuinely emerged from party primaries, while some submit names of candidates without conducting primaries.
“Even though we have no power under the law to reject the names of candidates submitted by political parties, this time, we will name and shame political parties that do these. “So, we should do the right thing for our democracy.”
Vote-buying takes new turn
The Telescope had reported that vote-buying had taken a new dimension in the state, barely two weeks to the governorship poll.
According to the newspaper, vote buying to rig election is rearing its ugly head with higher stakes than hitherto in Osun State slated Governorship Election of September 22, 2018. This is as the umpire, Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, is mulling the idea of a strict secret balloting system.
Information shows that the three dominant parties, All Progressives party, APC, People Democratic Party, PDP and Social Democratic Party, SDP have already perfected ways to buy votes before and during the election; though the three parties denied the allegations.
APC, the ruling party has commenced various programmes just as the election is approaching. Chief of this is the hitherto rested OYES Group, where graduates are engaged in menial jobs. Unlike past editions of the programme, the government is insisting on the applicants using voters’ card as the only form of identification.
This is not the only avenue it has collected PVC numbers of citizens in the wake of approaching election. Other programmes, according to sources, include “the one supervised by the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, where small scale entrepreneurs were loaned N10, 000 each. Voters cards were required and its VIN numbers were recorded both at Freedom Park and the Iwo events”.
The PDP camp has also asked its foot soldiers to collect people’s voter’s card numbers. At a popular business centre in Osogbo, the Osun State Capital, a popular female PDP member, name withheld, was seen making photocopies of names with PVC number. She made photocopy of the pages totalling 148 pages.
Unconfirmed information has it that it is also going round the NYSC orientation camp to get corpers’ PVC numbers. A worker at the camp, whose party affiliation could not be ascertained at the time of going to press confirmed the incident but maintained it was APC “people that were collecting the numbers”,
The SDP is not spared in the ridiculous PVC number collection, as its foot soldiers were seen collating the PVC numbers of people suspected to be members of the Nigerian Peace Corps.
One of the people that have been contacted boasted that “the slogan in Ekiti was vote and cook soup, Osun would be vote and buy a plot of land.”
When prodded further, he said candidates were ready to pay N100, 000 for a secured vote and as much as N200, 000. When he saw the incredulity on the face of the reporter, he referred to the concluded primaries where delegates were paid between N200, 000 to N250, 000 each.
However, the most nauseating part is the allegation that the State Government under the guise of obtaining fingerprints of school students asked them to register for identity cards which has not been issued months after the exercise had been conducted.
Efforts to get the reaction of the government failed as the honourable Commissioner of Information, Adelani Baderinwa did not pick his calls.
Meanwhile, INEC has announced that it would do everything possible to ensure there would be no vote buying. One of the strategies it is going to employ is to ensure that voters do not get to polling centres with their phones and voting would be done in cordoned off places.
We tried to speak with computer experts on ways the PVC number could be made use of to rig election. Speaking on condition of anonymity, The Telescope Nigeria learnt that no rigging could take place except staffers of INEC are compromised.
One of the experts went further to say that if there are too many card readers failure where voters would find it difficult to be accredited, “it could means some officials have been compromised and such numbers have been taken out of the cards, however, we would be talking about tens of thousands of voters and I can assure you, this will raise a lot of noise. And I don’t think any official would want to be at the receiving end of such happening.
“What other way I may think of is reprisal effect. They may be able to know if you did not vote for them after collecting money when issue of the election goes to the tribunal and INEC is ordered to make available to the parties involved copies of the ballot used at the election.
“But sincerely, I look forward to how they will succeed with whatever plans they have. I don’t see it working”.
NAN/The Telescope
