*Calls for the sack of INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood for registering foreigners, suspicious persons
*Asks international community, civil society, the media to seek overhaul of the electoral body
The Nigerian opposition Coalition, the CUPP has raised the alarm over what it dubbed moves to use a secret court action to stop the use of the BVAS machine in the upcoming 2023 general election.
Addressing a press conference, the spokesperson of the CUPP, Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere, said “the vigilance team of the group, following credible intelligence, led to the discovery of the suit filed at the Federal High Court, Owerri, since the 24th August, 2022”.
The Opposition also displayed what it described as “extracts of a segment of the National Voters Register” which it claimed, contained at least 10 million fake registrations and alluding that it was the handiwork of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
The group maintained that the names of purported registered voters on the register, were sourced from both within and outside Nigeria, including some African countries such as Ghana, Cameroon, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Togo, Guinea, Gambia and countries outside Africa, such as Jamaica, Brazil and New Zealand.
They also showed what they claimed were voter registrations captured from passport photographs and other sourcea.
Significant among the discoveries in the said register were that majority of the names listes on the purported register were foreign names of persons who were incidentally all born in 1983, despite whether their photographs showed they were elderly or younger people.
Several people in the purported voters register displayed by Ikenga, also showed people who were said to have been born between 1900 and 1914, yet their photographs resemble very young persona.
Also, several people whose pictures showed they were of the male gender, had their gender written in the register as female and vice versa.
Ikenga gave an instance of the fraudulent manipulations with the home electoral ward of the Imo State Governor, Sen. Hope Uzodimma, where he displayed a purported voter register showing the fraudulent registration of foreigners as voters in a rural Igbo community and the superimpositon of male photographs on female gender and vice versa.
He also claimed the number of registered voters in the governor’s Omuma Ward had been manipulated by over 100,000 voters.
The CUPP further alleged that the Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, was allegedly under pressure for the commission to announce a change to the Commission’s position on the compulsory use of the BVAS machine for accreditation, insisting that he must be kicked out as Chairman of the electoral Commission.
Ikenga Ugochinyere claimed that the intelligence unit of the CUPP intercepted the evidences, including the “secret law suit” filed in FHC, Owerri, seeking to nullify the use of BVAS suring accreditation and exposure of the massive compromises made in the purportes voters register.
The group therefore called on the international community, local and international observer groups, civil society and the general public to help it protect democracy as the success of any of these plots will erode the integrity and credibility of the electoral process and deny Nigerians the sovereign right to freely choose their leaders.
