WITH
few days to the election, a middle-aged man was, weekend, arrested with
about 25 Permanent Voters Card (PVCs) at Ugo in Orhionmwon Local
Government Area of the state.
The man was alleged to have been
luring people by telling them that whosoever submits his/her PVC would
be given a N200,000 empowerment loan.
A resident of the area, who
was involved in the arrest of the suspect, said: “This morning, we got
information that one boy was collecting PVCs from some people. We then
decided to look for the boy. We were able to locate him as he was
tracked to his house and 25 PVCs were found with him. The boy said he
was asked to do so by some of his leaders in Ugo. He said he was told
that anyone who surrendered his card will be given a loan worth of
N200,000.
“That motivated the people to give out their cards. We
then took the boy to the police station at Ugo. They had earlier warned
him to stop what he was doing but he did not listen.”
Edo State
Police Commissioner, Mr. Chris Ezike, confirmed the arrest pointing out
that the suspect would be moved and the case transferred to the
headquarters of the state police command in Benin.
He, however,
said: “The information I received was that he was caught with 10 PVC s. I
have instructed that the matter be transferred to the state
headquarters. We have advised all to play by the rules
Spokesperson
for INEC in the state, Mrs. Priscillia Sule, who neither confirmed nor
denied the incident, promised to contact the officials in charge of the
area for details.
Meanwhile, the PDP has written INEC over the identities of those who will conduct the election.
Quoting
from excerpts of its letter to INEC, PDP Publicity Secretary Chris O
Nehikhare, in a statement, said: As part of our preparations for the Edo
State gubernatorial election slated for Saturday September 10, 2016 we
have formally requested for a meeting with staff (Local Government
Collation Officers, Returning Officer for the State, Staff in charge of
card readers, E-Collation Officers and members of the ICT team) of INEC
assigned to the state to conduct the elections in Edo State.
‘’You
will be aware that as at today 5/09/2016 (5 days before the elections),
the names and identities of these staff have not been made public.
Information available to us is that INEC has granted requests made by
the APC for a similar meeting with the above mentioned staff. We are
reliably informed that members of APC have been granted remote access to
INEC servers and INEC e-collation platforms. ‘’We are informed that
this was done in furtherance of a plan by certain officials of INEC to
grant APC real time access to INEC’s e-collation platforms in a bid to
enable them manipulate results on the field at polling stations where
they are losing elections or disrupt the electoral process at such
locations. We believe that such a meeting will avail us the opportunity
to lay our complaints.
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