THE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said nobody will be able to vote with bought Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) in the 2023 general elections.
INEC spokesperson, Festus Okoye, made the assertion on Monday, December 19, while addressing allegations that some politicians are buying PVCs ahead of the 2023 general elections.
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Okoye said politicians who are hoping to use purchased PVCs to compromise the elections were only engaging in wishful thinking.
He reiterated that with the introduction and adoption of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), no one can use another person’s PVC to vote without being caught and stopped.
The INEC spokesperson stressed that the only thing politicians can achieve by buying PVCs is preventing registered voters from casting their votes.
“There are two possibilities here. The first possibility is for you to dispossess someone of his or her PVCs and get the person not to vote, in order words, you are engaging in voter suppression,” he said.
“If you purchase someone’s PVC and the person does not vote, what that means is that one vote is out, so you are suppressing the vote in that particular constituency. That is one aspect.
“The second aspect of it is that some politicians are very optimistic. They normally plan for the rainy days, they are still thinking that there is a possibility that they can beat the BVAS, which will be used for voter accreditation and authentication.
“I believe that the exercise will be futile. Anybody who is purchasing PVCs is just engaging in an exercise in futility. The only thing the person can do with that PVC is to make sure that the owner does not vote on election day.
“But for you to come on election day to the polling unit with a PVC belonging to someone else and you attempt to vote with it, it is next to impossibility. The BVAS will not capture your fingerprint. It will not capture your facials.”
The ICIR reported on December 13 that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had raised an alarm that some politicians were buying PVCs of voters to harvest their Voter Identification Numbers (VIN) ahead of the polls.
INEC National Commissioner, Mohammed Haruna, who made the allegation, warned politicians and unsuspecting Nigerians against the development.
Similarly, the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) alleged that some politicians were taking advantage of vulnerable persons in the North, especially women, to buy their PVCs with just N2,000.
“Thousands or possibly even millions of northern voters, particularly women, are being made to surrender their PVCs for a pittance, in most instances, not more than N2000,” NEF spokesperson Hakeem Baba-Ahmed said while speaking on Channels Television last week.
“In some instances, they are told their cards will be returned to them after they are processed for additional payments as poverty relief. No cards are returned.”
He expressed worries that the tactics were being used for voter suppression by political parties in the region.
“Our investigations suggest that this an aggressive and blatant voter suppression attempt to reduce the voting powers of the north. We have been assured by INEC that this practice in itself will not compromise its systems and processes.
“People, who are involved in this practice appear to be working for different parties, but they target communities, where they assume their parties or candidates have comparative advantages or disadvantages.”
