By Umar Muhammad Puma
The All Progressives Congress (APC) has issued a red alert on the Aug. 9 gubernatorial election in the Osun state, saying about half a million Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs), 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 Aug. 9 Osun governorship election,’’ the party said, in a statement issued in Osogbo yesterday, by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.
“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 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,’’ it said.
APC said, based on the dubious plan, unscrupulous security agents both official and unofficial – will be at hand to brutalize, arrest and detain any agent or voter who may want to challenge this illegality.
The party therefore called on INEC, if it is not part of this diabolical plan, to ensure that only the voters registers used to issue out the PVCs to voters up till Aug. 4th will be used to conduct the Aug. 9 Election.
