The INEC National Electoral Commissioner for information and
Voter Education, Mr Festus Okoye has denied rigging the last weekend
by-election for the Ogoja-Yala federal constituency in favour of the ruling APC
in Cross River State.
Few days ago, the chairman of opposition PDP in the State,
Venatius Ikem addressed a news conference in Calabar, accusing Mr Okoye who
supervised the two by-elections of 26 February, 2022, of compromising his
office and rigging the exercise for the APC.
Speaking over a private radio station in Calabar, Sparkling
FM, Okoye said, “Nothing can be farther from the truth.”
He took time to explain the processes of the election to
show that it could be very difficult to rig election with the Biomodal Voter
Accreditation System (BVAS) machine deployed for the exercise.
He said part of challenges the INEC experienced during the
2022 by-elections were provisions of agents by other political parties and
vehicles to accompany the electoral materials to the various polling units.
He explained that the anxiety and anger that arose from the
by-elections were from persons who wanted to rig the process but could not.
“The challenge we had was that some of the political parties
did not make provision for vehicles to accompany the voting materials to the
polling units (PU). So, at each stage, the two major political parties had
their representatives at the PU.
“These anxiety and anger arose because those who used to
hawk voting materials like permanent voters’ cards did not have opportunity to
corrupt the system this time around because of BVAS.
“BVAS was able to read the face and finger prints of
accredited voters. In the event that he machine could not do so, it means that
the person would have involved in identity theft, meaning that he was not
registered at that PU, and the voter card he was holding was not his.
“That’s why you saw the level of contest and consistency in
the numbers of votes scored by each party. Compare this with what used to occur
when we used Incident Form. So, it tells you that those that vote at each PU
were those registered there,” he stated.
Okoye further said that before the votes were counted, they
had to interrogate the BVAS, and it gave them the number of registered and
accredited voters at the given PU.
This, he said, was to ensure that the votes cast tallied
with number of accredited voters.
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