Underage persons, who attempt to vote during this year’s general elections and their parents are to be arrested, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has warned.

The Commission also declared that politicians buying Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) and harvesting Voter Identification Numbers (VINs) to rig the poll would fail.

National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, stated this yesterday during a live programme. He said the action of those purchasing PVCs would only oppress voters and prevent them from exercising their rights on Election Day.

According to him, data of every registered voter had been domiciled in the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and not in the PVCs. His words: “Those who are harvesting VINs of registered voters are doing that in futility. Why are they harvesting and buying off VINs when those VINs were published in our local government areas and in our registration areas when we displayed the voter register for claims and objections. Those VINs are there.

“We have made it very clear that this Commission will deploy BVAS for voter’s identification and authentication and the data of every registered voter in Nigeria per polling unit are domiciled in BVAS and not in the PVCs. The only thing the Presiding Officer (PO) will do on Election Day is to look at the last six digits of your PVC and use it to bring out your VIN for the purpose of calling up your data from the BVAS. Those buying PVCs and harvesting VINs can only engage in voter oppression. They can only prevent the voter from going to the polling unit on election day but in terms of carrying the PVC of someone else to give another person for voting, I can assure you that it is next to impossible.”

Okoye disclosed that about 1.4 million ad hoc staff, made up of National Youth Service Corps members and students of tertiary institutions in their final year, would be engaged for the elections.

“You will know that it is next to impossible for INEC to have over 1.4 million staff members on its pay roll. The strength staff of the Commission is around 16,000 and so when we devolve the collection to the various registration areas, we are going to engage the services of corps members to assist the Commission in terms of giving out these PVCs,” he added. Okoye said in an effort to address issues around underage registration, INEC had summoned all its officers in areas where the anomaly took place.

“They will appear before a special panel of the Commission and it is still ongoing. We have also made it very clear that any visibly underage person should not on any account, approach any of our polling units on Election Day, because if the person does, the person will definitely be arrested.
The parents will also be arrested for aiding and abetting such a venture,” he restated.

The National Commissioner said the clean up of the voter register was ongoing, adding that Nigerians would be pleased with the end result.

“Some of the data you saw on social media about underage registration were some registrations that took place from 2011 to before the 2019 election,” he explained.

Okoye went on: “This Commission had the courage to publish the entire register of voters and ask Nigerians to also check to ensure no malicious registrations have gone into our voter register.

“So, we have harvested all the claims and objectives and are cleaning up the voter register. We assure Nigerians that the voter register we are using for the 2023 general election will be one they will be proud of.

“As of today, the voter register is hovering around 93.5 million registered voters. On January 16, the Commission will publish the official register that will be used for 2023 elections.”