INEC REC Admits Over-Voting During Osun Election, Says BVAS Exposed Crime
Following the judgement by the Osun State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal sacking Ademola Adeleke as the governor, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said politicians in connivance with its staff perpetrated over-voting during July 16th 2022 poll.
Osun Resident Electoral Commission, Dr Mutiu Agboke, in a video sighted by THE WHISTLER on Wednesday, while speaking at the palace of Oluwo of Iwo, Oba Abdulrosheed Akanbi, said that Bimodal Voters Accreditation System(BVAS) helped to revealed overvoting during the Osun election.
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Agboke explained that BVAS helped INEC to exposed those who carried out overvoting on the election day during Osun guber poll.
According to him, “Let me use this opportunity to educate our people that against the conspiracy theory going around in the country that sequel to tribunal judgement in Osun State that BVAS has a problem and is deceitful, this is not correct.
“We did not use BVAS to conduct election, we did not do electronic voting nor was BVAS used to cast votes, BVAS was only use for accreditation and accreditation is meant to identify the certainty of those that came to cast ballot and that is why against the conspiracy theory, it was BVAS that helped INEC to exposed those who carried out overvoting on the election day, so it was not the BVAS that created the problem, that should be corrected.”
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He added that “Based on that ruling of tribunal, we have identified some inadequacies from the politicians, voters, our staff and our responsibility is to ensure that we cover all these gaps so that the votes of Osun people can speak for them.
“We have warn very strongly that our staff who will not follow the guidelines shall go to jail and we are serious about it. Anybody that wants to come to polling unit…people were able to do overvoting, people deliberately bypass the BVAS.
“The politicians in connivance with our staff deliberately bypassed the BVAS, it was this BVAS that exposed overvoting during Osun Election. So with this judgement of tribunal we have known how overvoting can happen, we are going to beam our search light on those staff and I can assure you that all of us should own the process together. This is the way we can correct this anomalies.”
Similarly, Agbake during a stakeholders’ meeting with Osun State party chairmen ahead of mock accreditation of voters exercise on Wednesday, reiterated that politicians, fraudulent voters in connivance with their staff made over-voting possible during 2022 Osun governorship election.
He explained that, “If INEC has introduced BVAS for the sanctity of our accreditation and process, how come did we have overvoting during election day in Osun. Some individuals were surreptitiously procured by political class to bypass the BVAS, once you bypass the BVAS and go and collect the ballot paper, there must be over-voting, that is one leg.
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“Another possibility is where our staff, be it ad-hoc or permanent, in connivance with these fraudulent electorate deliberately allow people to bypass the BVAS and they are given ballot paper to vote.
He cautioned politicians against BVAS fraud and urged electorate to resist fraudulent voters who may want to bypass BVAS during general election.
Agbake stressed that “I want to tell Osun people that the issue of overvoting was not orchestrated by BVAS, we did not use BVAS to vote nor cast our ballot. Our ballot was manual voting, over-voting was caused by fraudulent people that came to vote on election. They are criminally minded.
“Let us stop all these blame game on INEC, let us open our eyes very well on election day. Watch out for our staff who may want to connive with politicians. We must all own the process together.”
