Ahead of the Saturday’s governorship election in Osun State, the All Progressives Congress has raised the alarm over alleged cloning of about 500,000 unclaimed Permanent Voter Cards in the state.
The party did not attribute the act to any person or group but stated that that the cards were cloned for the purpose of rigging and had been handed over to persons outside the state to enable them participate in the Saturday’s election.
National Publicity Secretary of the party, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in a statement he issued in Osogbo on Monday, urged the Independent National Electoral Commission to be vigilant to ensure that only those who it issued the PVCs to were the ones allowed to vote on the election day.
He said, “The All Progressives Congress has issued a red alert on the August 9 governorship election in the Osun State, saying about half a million Permanent Voters Cards, which were either unclaimed, not handed over to their authentic owners or were obtained fraudulently, have been cloned by unscrupulous persons ahead of the election, with the sole purpose of rigging.
”These cloned cards, mostly in the hands of persons from states other than Osun, are to be used along with the authentic PVCs issued to the electorate in Osun state during the August 9 Osun governorship election.”
The party said for INEC to prove it was not part of the scam, it must within 72 hours to the election make available to all political parties the voters register it used for issuing the authentic PVCs.
“We also demand that copies of these registers, which are already in possession of the local government electoral officers, be
made available to all political parties at least 72 hours before the election. Anything short of using the registers that contained the names of the authentic voters will not be acceptable,” the party said.
According to Mohammed, the cloned cards are already in the possession of thousands of people especially in the neighbouring states around Osun State.
He said those in the possession of the fraudulent cards were being induced with money and instructed to superimpose their photographs on the cloned PVCs.
The statement said, “Already, we can confirm that the hundreds of thousands of people in possession of these cloned cards all over Nigeria, especially in the states neighboring Osun, are being induced monetarily and instructed to super impose their photographs on the cloned PVCs.
”The game plan is for them to arrive early at the the polling booths on election day, where conniving electoral officials will turn a blind eye to this fraud by not checking whether or not the names of these impersonators with cloned cards are on the voters register before going ahead to accredit them, to pave the way for them to use the cloned cards to vote at the expense of the genuine holders of the cards.”
The alarm by the party followed an earlier directive it issued on Monday mandating all its elected and political appointee members across the nation at both the state and federal levels to report in Osogbo on Tuesday and remain in there till Saturday after the conclusion of the election.
It urged the concerned party members to troop to Osogbo to render support for its candidate, Governor Rauf Aregbesola, who is seeking re-election in the Saturday’s poll. Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
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