Political candidates are making fruitless attempts to rig the 2023 general elections, according to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The Bimodal Voter Registration System (BVAS), which will be used to authenticate and accredit voters starting in 2023, will reject biometric information from those who are not the original owners of traded PVCs, according to INEC.
Festus Okoye, the national commissioner of INEC, said on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, “In terms of any politician avoiding the BVAS, I want to tell you that that would not happen, that is an impossible.”
The Northern Elders Forum and the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, two non-governmental organisations, claimed that politicians are buying PVCs from underprivileged voters to rig the upcoming elections.
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However, Okoye on Sunday referred to the desperate politicians’ intention to rig the next election as “an impossibility” and called it impossible.
He stated that possessing a PVC that does not belong to one is an electoral offence and that it is the obligation of the security authorities to track down and prosecute offenders.
“Some politicians are very optimistic, they normally plan for the rainy day; they are still thinking that there is a possibility that they can beat the BVAS that we are going to use for voter accreditation and authentication but their exercise will be an exercise in futility.
“Anybody who is purchasing a permanent voters card is just engaging in an exercise in futility. The only thing any person can do is to make sure the voter does not vote on election day but for you to come to the polling unit on election day with voter’s card belonging to someone else, and you attempt to vote with it, that is an impossibility, the BVAS will not capture your fingerprint,” Okoye said.
In order to safeguard electoral integrity, polling units have been evacuated from important politicians’ residences, churches, mosques, and shrines, according to the INEC commissioner. In order to achieve free and fair elections in 2023, he charged voters with supporting the commission’s initiatives through shared responsibility and mandate protection.
He added, “We withdrew polling units from traditional rulers’ palaces, polling units next to politicians’ houses, polling units inside of temples, and polling units from locations we deemed unsuitable for electoral operations.
