Osun Election: APC says 500,000 unclaimed permanent voters cards cloned

Governor Rauf Aregbesola

Party alleges that the cards would be used for rigging.

The All Progressives Congress, APC, has issued a red alert on the August 9 gubernatorial election in Osun State.

The party alleged that 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 August 9 Osun governorship election,” the party said in a statement issued in Osogbo on Monday by its National Publicity Secretary, 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 neighbouring 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 alleged that based on the dubious plan, unscrupulous security agents – both official and unofficial – would be at hand to brutalise, arrest, and detain any agent or voter who may want to challenge this illegality.

The party therefore called on INEC to ensure that only the voters’ registers used to issue out the PVCs to voters up till August 4 be used to conduct the August 9 election.

”We also demand that copies of these registers, which are already in possession of the local government electoral officers, be made available to all political parties at least 72 hours before the election. Anything short of using the registers that contained the names of the authentic voters will not be acceptable,” it warned.

APC thanked the people of Osun, clamouring for a free, fair and credible election, for reaching out to the party with useful information that would thwart any rigging plan and ensure the success of the polls.

The party urged the people of the state and APC members to be very vigilant ahead, during and after voting on Saturday, against the background of the alleged desperation to win at all costs by the PDP candidate, Iyiola Omisore.

The APC had accused Mr. Omisore and the PDP of conjuring an opinion poll purportedly by USAID showing he was leading every other candidate. The USAID later disowned the poll.

“Their desperation knows no bounds, hence they will do anything, no matter how illegal, to thwart the will of the people. But no power is bigger than people’s power, and no inducement is worth anyone’s conscience. The votes of the people of the state of Osun must not only be counted, but must count on Saturday,” it said.