Ahead the general election, a pressure group in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, ”PDP Integrity Vanguard”, at the weekend, demanded for the immediate forensic examination of the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) logistics and technologies, to ascertain its readiness or otherwise for the polls.
Addressing newsmen in Abuja, the spokesperson of the group, Senator Aniete Okon, disclosed that the call became necessary following several lapses already discovered by registered voters who tested their permanent voter cards (PVCs) on INEC portal as directed by the commission.
Senator Okon, who was the pioneer national publicity secretary of the PDP, also raised the alarm that the group had a strong feeling that the data base of the commission had been deliberately compromised to give undue advantage to the main opposition.
According to him,”based on our deep investigations and the recent developments, we believe that the system has been deliberately compromised to give undue advantage and a head start to a political party, APC to be precise”
The PDP Integrity Vanguard declared that some of these discoveries “have cast serious shadows on the integrity of the entire INEC logistics and technologies for the conduct of the 2015 elections and clearly show APC as culpable,” he stated.
“We, therefore, call for a forensic examination of the logistics and technologies towards sanitising the system and restoring the lost confidence in the March 28 Presidential election,” he declared.
He pointed out that it was alarming that registered voters, armed with their PVCs, could not locate their names on INEC data base when they visited its portal in Abuja in the Federal Capital, while some faceless people had been calling registered voters on their phones, soliciting votes for the APC ahead the elections.
Senator Okon wondered how such APC vote canvassers got the telephone numbers of registered voters if the INEC’s data base had not been compromised.
According to him, “a particular woman who registered to vote in Gwarinpa in the FCT collected her PVC sometime ago, she decided to join other people to visit INEC’s portal to cross check her personal details, the query turned negative, she tried again and again and again using the information on her PVC as required on the portal”.
“It will shock you to know that when she inputted the same information and entered Akwa Ibom instead of FCT(where she registered), a corrupted version of her PVC was located in Akwa Ibom with a different but similar name and the same voter’s Identification number, VIN; what are the indications of these developments?” he queried.
“Is this not a clear and sufficient proof that APC had infiltrated the structural facilities of INEC, secured access to sensitive data and has corrupted same to create situations such as the one described above? He further pointed out.
Senator Okon stated that it was through divine intervention that the February 14 and 28 elections were rescheduled as their outcomes would have plunged the entire nation into an unprecedented chaos based on the emerging facts that INEC was not really prepared as it claimed.
