Osun rerun: CUPP accuses INEC of releasing PVCs to government officials

The Coalition of United Political Parties on Monday accused the Independent National Electoral Commission of giving unclaimed Permanent Voter Cards in units where there would be rerun election to officials of the Osun State Government, headed by the All Progressives Congress.

The Spokesman of CUPP, Ikenga Ugochinyere, made the allegation in a statement on Monday.

The group said the conspiracy was being spearheaded by some unnamed national officers of INEC.

Ugochinyere said in the statement: “The attention of the CUPP has been drawn to credible intelligence showing a new conspiracy by some national officers of INEC to tamper and manipulate the Osun governorship rerun with the ongoing release of uncollected PVCs to desperate APC government in Osun State.

“We wish to alert the public that INEC, in furtherance of this move being coordinated by an INEC senior officer from South-West, has refused to release the official list of people who have collected PVCs at the seven polling units where the election is to be held.

“We have it on good authority that less than 1,000 registered voters have collected their PVC’s out of the 3,498 voters. This means that less than 1,000 persons are to participate in the actual voting.

“We demand that INEC immediately release this list. The delay is a calculated plot to announce a fictitious figure of uncollected PVCs to enable the APC to share the PVCs to thugs imported from Lagos.”

Ugochinyere said CUPP was aware that the Information Communications Technology Unit of INEC was on the verge of releasing the telephone numbers of registered voters of the rerun polling units to the APC.

He said: “The plan is to call, harass and bribe the voters with huge sums from the Paris Club refund meant to pay Osun workers their three-year salary.”

The election was declared inconclusive by INEC because the difference between the votes scored by the two leading parties, PDP and All Progressives Congress, were lower than the number of votes cancelled.

After the collation of all the results from the 30 council areas of the state, Adeleke of the PDP had 254,698, while APC’s Gboyega Oyetola polled 254,345.

The candidate of the Action Democratic Party, Moshood Adeoti, scored 49,742, while Akinbade had 7,681 votes and Omisore with 128,049 votes.