Ahead of this Saturday’s governorship election in Osun State, the All Progressives Congress has asked the Independent National Electoral Commission to produce and circulate to all political parties, the Voters Identification Numbers of unclaimed Permanent Voter Cards in the state.
The party made the call in a communique after its emergency National Executive Council meeting which held in Osogbo, the Osun State capital on Wednesday.
National Publicity Secretary of the party, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who issued the communiqué, said INEC should declare anybody in possession of the VIN of the unclaimed PVCs as impostor, “who must be arrested if he or she tries to use it”.
The party’s latest position is a follow up to its earlier outcry that about 500,000 unclaimed PVCs in the state had been cloned for the purpose of rigging and had been given to people outside the state to enable them to vote during the election.
The party insisted that INEC had to take these steps as the “minimal irreducible condition” for Saturday’s election to be considered free and fair.
The communique said in addition to circulating the VINs of the unclaimed PVCs, INEC must publicly declare invalid for the purpose of the August 9, Osun governorship election, all the PVCs with the circulated VINs.
“APC strongly warns against the plan by the PDP-led Federal Government to rig the Osun election through financial inducements and also by using the security agents who have been deployed in Osun State in their thousands, especially soldiers and State Security Service officials, to arrest key leaders of the party”, the communique read.
Mohammed said the party had received information that the Federal Government representatives had met with INEC officials and planned to disburse “huge sum of money” to rig the election.
“The party has received information that at a meeting held overnight in Osogbo involving top officials of the PDP and the Federal Government as well as INEC officials, a huge sum of money was earmarked for payment to key electoral officials to rig Saturday’s election in favour of the PDP.
“At the same meeting it was resolved that APC leaders like Senator Jide Omoworare, Hon. Rotimi Makinde and others will immediately be put under house arrest and their movements severely restricted as soon as they cast their votes.
“Any arrest, harassment and intimidation of our leaders, as was massively done in Ekiti, will be totally unacceptable and deemed as orchestrated to rig the election”, the party said.
The party also condemned what it called “the rumored plan by the security not to allow party agents within five metres of the polling booths to be used for Saturday’s election”.
It called the alleged plan as “a ploy to make it impossible for all accredited agents to perform their statutory duty of verifying the identity of those coming to be accredited to vote”.
It also condemned the “glaring partisanship” of the security agencies that had been deployed in Osun for the election.
The party said its claim was “against the background that the Directorate of State Security today prevented the solidarity rally of the NLC in support of Gov. Aregbesola at the Freedom Park Osogbo from taking place on the grounds that there is a division within the Nigeria Labour Congress”.