The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Osun State has raised the alarm over plans to manipulate the electoral card readers by some politicians during Saturday’s governorship election in the state.
Raising the alarm at a press conference, the APC chairman in Osun State, Prince Gboyega Famodun, said certain electoral criminals have finalised plans to use youth corpers engaged by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to perfect a rigging technique whereby the card readers will be significantly compromised.
”We have just been reliably informed that certain electoral criminals have perfected a rigging technique whereby the card reading machines will be significantly compromised by its operators so that it would not effectively indicate the ownership of the card.
In this way one card can be repeatedly used to vote by different people.
”Our information is that this method was successfully used in the last senatorial election in Osun West district which gave the PDP more votes than it legitimately would have had.
”Our information also had it that the people used by these electoral riggers were the youth corpers in the engagement of the INEC. Incentivised by the fraudulent success of the last exercise, these electoral riggers we are told, have concluded plans to invest significant huge amount of money to manipulate the coming governorship election in Ede and other centres of the state.
”It is important that this information be made available to the public, especially INEC and the security agents, so that youth corpers who will perform this fraud directly will be under strict observation not to compromise the card readers.
For an election that is so critical to the progress of the state and its people, any attempt by whosoever to de-legitimise the people’s wish should ruthlessly be dealt with. Politicians should play by the rules and the law should be uncompromising wherever there are infractions and an attempt to fraudulently snatch victory,” Prince Famodun stated.