The Peoples Democratic Party has urged the Independent National Electoral Commission to consider allowing eligible voters to use their Temporary Voter Cards during the forthcoming general elections to avoid rigging and disenfranchisement of millions of Nigerians at the polls.
The National Auditor of the PDP, Alhaji Adewole Adeyanju, while answering questions from journalists in Abuja on Sunday, also urged INEC to consider commencing the use of the Permanent Voter Cards in the subsequent bye elections arising from the general elections to test run the Card Readers just being introduced by the Commission.
Adeyanju said, “This is to ensure peaceful and mass participation of the eligible voters. We want innovation but the full usage of the PVCs and the Card readers for now can not work.
“They have to test run the Card readers. Right now,the INEC has not been showing or demonstrating how the Card readers will work.
“The Card Reader, as I was told, will attend to a voter for almost five minutes; if it has to attend to about 500 voters, it will take up to 8 hours,how can this work as expected with the level of illiteracy in Nigeria?
“To me, I think it will be better for the INEC to test run it first and adopt its usage it the future elections and not now.”
Adeyanju, while defending his stand for the use of TVCs, stated that it was by divine intervention that prompted the INEC to postpone the elections as it would have brought serious calamity to the country since it had now been exposed to Nigerians and the international community that INEC was not fully prepared for the polls as it claimed.
He said, “The Chairman of the Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, was not bold enough to tell the public that they were not ready for the elections because of moral burden, if he tells the nation the truth, they would have accepted and forgiven him.
“As we speak, over 23 million eligible voters are yet to get their PVCs and you are saying without the PVCs they will not vote. In Ogun State, where I come from, the collection of the PVCs is about 38 per cent.
“What happens to the rest?”
The auditor appealed to the eligible voters, who were yet to collect their PVCs, to do so within the time frame provided with the rescheduling of the elections so that they would not be enfranchised by INEC.
On the chances of the ruling PDP in the forthcoming general elections despite the mounting opposition against it, Adeyanju exuded confidence that hi party will triumph at the coming polls. Hear him, “We are set for the elections. Any day any time, our presidential candidate, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, will clear the polls in all the six geopolitical zones. We will not only retain the PDP controlled states, we will win more states and more seats at the state and National Assemblies.
“There will be no hiding place for the opposition. Nigerians have tested our party and they will support us again for the continuity of our transformation revolution in all the sectors.”
