On Monday, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) issued a warning to minors not to show up to voting locations on Tuesday.
The document also stated that the ineligible voters’ parents would be arrested for assisting in the fraud.
On the television show “Sunrise Daily,” INEC National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee Festus Okoye sounded the caution.
He emphasized that anyone who seems too young to vote should stay away from polling places on election day.
If the person does show up, police will take them into custody on charges of conspiring to commit a crime, and their parents will face charges of assisting their offspring in this endeavor.
The Commission has also criticized those who have purchased Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) and collected VINs (VIN).
Voter identification numbers (VINs) of active voters are being collected in vain, he stated.
When we revealed the voter registrations for claims and objections, we released the VINs in the local government regions and registration areas where those VINs were located. So why are they harvesting and buying off VINs now? The VINs you need are available.
Every single registered voter in Nigeria, broken down by polling unit, has their information stored in the BvAS, not on their PVCs. This has been made abundantly plain by the Commission.
On Election Day, the Presiding Officer will only check the last six digits of your PVC to determine your Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), which will be used to access your voting history in the BVAS.
People who purchase provisional voting certificates and collect voter identification numbers are engaging in voter suppression at best.
I can promise you that it is quite difficult to steal a PVC and use it to vote in another person’s stead. They can only stop the voter from traveling to the polling unit on Election Day.
Okoye has stated that 1.4 million National Youth Service Corps members and final-year college students will be recruited by the Commission to work as temporary electoral staff. Y
You will be aware that it is quite improbable that INEC employs more than 1,400 thousand people.
According to the Commission’s chairman, “the strength workforce of the Commission is around 16,000 and so when we devolve the collection to the various registration regions, we are going to enlist the services of corp members to assist the Commission in terms of giving out these PVCs.”
On January 16, Okoye announced, the Commission would release the final voter roll for the 2023 general election.
We have a large, accurate voter database that we can rely on. As of right now, there are 93.5 names on the voter roll.
The Commission will release the official voter roll for the 2023 general election on January 16th.
I agree with you that there have been problems with underage registration.
We have ordered all the officers involved in the locations where we found underage registration to appear before a special panel of the Commission, and this investigation is ongoing.
We have been quite clear that on election day, no one who looks too young to be voting should come near any of our polling places.
If the person shows up, the parents will also be jailed for their role in encouraging such an action.
The Chairman has assured the Nigerian people that efforts are being made to rid the voter rolls of any fraudulent registrations, and that they can rest assured that their votes would count on election day.
Some of the social media posts about minor voters registered between 2011 and the 2019 election.
This Commission had the guts to make public the voter list, and they’ve since been asking Nigerians to check it over and eliminate any fraudulent entries they find.
For the 2023 election, “we tell Nigerians that the voters registration that will be used is the one that they would be proud of.”
