PVC: INEC colluding with Presidency, PDP to rig 2015 elections –Tinubu

By Temidayo Akinsuyi Snr Correspondent, Lagos
The claim by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that it is doing its utmost best to conduct free, fair and credible elections in 2015 has been punctured by the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, who said the electoral body is deliberately colluding with the Presidency to rig the elections in favour of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Tinubu, who spoke on Saturday at a media briefing by the Lagos State chapter of the APC on the shoddy manner INEC is going about the distribution of Permanent Voter Cards (PVC) to eligible voters in Lagos, said the exercise is a colossal failure, which will not be accepted by the party leadership.
A visibly angry and bewildered Tinubu wondered what INEC has been doing over four years ago when the temporary voter cards were issued to Nigerians with which they voted in the 2011 general elections.
“INEC has four good years to prepare for the coming 2015 elections and there are laws, particularly constitutional and electoral act requiring certain actions to be taken.
“Before yesterday they announced the exercise of issuing a Permanent Voter Register. They have given us temporary voter cards to vote in 2011 as you will recall.
“They decided that there will be permanent voter cards consistent with biometric verification devices to improve on 2011 and make 2015 verifiable and show an improvement over the past record consistent to the standards across the world.
“INEC told us that they are ready. They said they have put everything in place. They gave us the date only to discover 48 hours ago that they are not even ready for the 20 local government recognised by INEC in Lagos State.
“They gave us the date only to tell us that only 11 local governments will be ready. Rather than outright boycott, the party endures the frustration and appeal to the public to continue with the 11 local governments.
“Our field reports, personal experiences and from what we observed so far, the exercise even in that so-called 11 local governments, the exercise has failed and it is unacceptable.
“In some instances, we don’t find INEC officials in some of the accredited booths, we don’t find them arriving on time, the cards were not sorted, were inadequate, where are they?
“To me, this exercise has failed. It is not acceptable. We will consider it as a rigging exercise practice. INEC has colluded with the Presidency, the opposing party to rig this election from the data”, he said.
He also flayed the decision of the electoral body to exclude the names of over 1.4 million voters from the voter register, saying it is a deliberate attempt by INEC to disenfranchise those affected from exercising their civil rights in the forthcoming elections.
“INEC is not a court of law. You cannot exclude Nigerians from exercising their franchise, the right to vote.
“You cannot even automatically without the court of law disqualify those people. This is deliberate as far as I am concerned and as our party is concerned.
“Adding one day to the exercise is not the issue. INEC should publish the name of those who have double registered.
“It can’t take the name of those involve from the register. It is the court that can do that. INEC must account for about two million voters on the register”.
On the way forward, Tinubu said: “The best thing is to start afresh in all the 20 local governments at the same time. Those who have collected their PVCs will not come back again.
“This is a colossal failure and it has eroded our confidence in INEC to conduct a credible election in 2015.
“We will protect the right of Lagosians to vote by all means. We will stand to protect our right. We urge Lagosians to protect, particularly our party members.
“We will instruct them on steps to take in the days ahead. If we had to hit the streets in protest, we will let them know.
“For any analytical mind, it is very clear that it is impossible for INEC to conduct a free and fair election in Lagos”, he said.
In another development, it has been gathered that some principal officers of INEC rather than get involved in assisting the electoral body to meet the deadline for the distribution of PVCs are trying to accommodate the controversial 30,000 additional polling units into the already existing ones.
The additional polling units has been criticised by many concerned Nigerians who felt it would give undue advantage to the Northern region of the country while shortchanging the Southern region.
INEC’s chairman, Attahiru , has become reluctant to pursue the new polling units because of the pressures brought upon the process by a subsisting legal challenge by the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), a letter from the Senate Committee on INEC to put the matter in abeyance for wider consultations, and security reports advising the commission to tread carefully on the matter, as well as numerous stakeholders advising against it for now.
Sunday Independent reliably learnt that Jega expressed his reluctance to pursue the matter further, given the divisive effect it has on the commission and other stakeholders who are critical to trust-building prior to a general election.
He made his feeling known to fellow national commissioners in a recent meeting held at the Commission’s headquarters.
“While he was about to press on with a better win-win way forward, he was cornered between a rock and a hard place by northern Turks, allegedly led by some INEC National Commissioners who forcefully insisted that INEC must go ahead with the new lopsided polling units, these Turks were unabashed about representing their regional political interests, and forcefully made their case that the states have almost implemented it even when there was no evidence of that at the said meeting to push the matter before the state offices”, said a source in the commission who wants to remain anonymous.
The source went further: “In contrast, insiders alleged that National Commissioners from the South were reluctant to forcefully push a regional agenda, to adequately present the case for the political zones which they represented while the northern Turks led by the three national commissioners as usual purveyed their sectional interests unabashedly and again had their way as usual”.