OP-UNEDITED | How INEC, APC are Collaborating to Rig Edo Election – By Deji Adeyanju

By Deji Adeyanju

The All Progressives Congress (APC) in collaboration with staff of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) are planning to subvert the electoral process for the September 10, 2016 gubernatorial election in Edo State.

I am aware that the plan is to ensure card reader failure in certain areas, particularly Edo North Senatorial District (Etsako West, Etsako East, Etsako Central, Owan West, Owan East and Akoko Edo) and some parts of Edo South Senatorial Districts. This would enable INEC staff in collaboration with APC members to falsify data and offer them the opportunity to rig the elections.

I am also aware that part of this plan is to subvert the provisions of the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended) by ensuring that INEC staff do not collate results at the polling units or post those results on the walls of the polling units as provided for by the Act, but at Ward/Local Government collation centres. This would afford the INEC staff and members of APC the opportunity to manipulate the results between the polling units and the Ward/Local Government Collation Centres.

Part of this plan is prevent e-collation officers from entering the results from the various polling units onto the INEC database immediately they are announced but to do so at the Ward/Local Government Collation centres after APC would have had the opportunity to manipulate them.

Finally, I am aware that this plan also includes INEC issuing fake result sheets to its staff at the polling unit level. The use of such result sheets would invalidate the results entered thereon & give an opportunity to APC members and colluding INEC staff to re-write the results onto original results sheets which will not reflect the reality of the number of votes cast for the candidates.

I urge the leadership of INEC to deliver free, fair and credible elections by ensuring that these plans fail. In that wise, we suggest the following simple & legal steps to ensure that the ideals of free, fair and credible elections are achieved –

INEC should deploy a minimum of 5 card readers per polling unit to the 2626 polling units spread across 192 wards in the 18 LGAs of the state. We are aware that INEC owns 145,000 functional card readers. Card reader deployment in this manner would reduce incidents of card reader failure and ensure that only voters with genuine voters’ cards are permitted to vote. The implementation of such a plan would only require 13, 130 carder readers.

INEC should commence testing of all card readers from today – September 8, 2016 until tomorrow to ensure that only functional card readers are deployed for the elections.

INEC should ensure that all its staff comply with the provisions of Sections 27(1)(a), 63 and 65 of the Electoral Act, and its operation guidelines for the elections by counting the number of valid votes cast at the various polling units and posting the results on the wall of the polling unit. Anything less than this would be resisted by our supporters across the State.

INEC should ensure that its e-collation officers enter the results onto the INEC database immediately they are announced at the polling units.

INEC should ensure that its staff only use original result sheets for the elections. To this end, we call on INEC to display samples of the ballot papers, result sheets and other sensitive materials to be used for the elections to enable relevant stakeholders differentiate between real and fake.

The PDP in Edo said they have made several formal attempts to meet with the INEC chairman to discuss these issues. All of those attempts have failed so far.

I believe that the implementation of these simple steps will ensure the delivery of the basic ideal of free, fair & credible elections.

God bless Nigeria.