Comrade Deji Adeyanju, convener of Concerned Nigerians, expressed concern on Thursday about some political parties and their candidates’ ongoing vote buying and other voter inducement strategies ahead of the 2023 general elections.
Adeyanju told Vanguard that the move by some politicians does not allow voters to choose who they want to give their mandate to, and he doubts that security agencies can do much to address the situation.
“I doubt whether the security agents are willing to curb vote buying because their body language does not indicate that they are,” he said. In fact, they supervised the vote-buying processes, as in Ekiti and Osun.
“As a result, I have little faith in security agencies to prevent vote buying in a large-scale election where there will be inadequate policing and securing of polling units.”
Speaking on the whistleblowing policy that will be used to curb sources of vote buying and other inducements, he praised the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, for its policy to control money laundering, which he said had severely harmed corrupt politicians who believed they would use their stolen and hidden monies to achieve their dark ambitions.
“The masterstroke was the Central Bank of Nigeria’s governor, Godwin Emefiele, coming up with the recent policy to curb such, but unfortunately, political bandits have gone after them. “They (political bandits) have been almost completely bullied,” he said.
He compared postponing the 2023 general elections to flying a kite and said it was impossible.
“I do not believe the elections will be postponed. They are simply flying a kite, as are some INEC employees. “There is no reason to postpone the elections,” he said.
However, sharing his views on the reliability and possible compromise of the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System, BVAS, during the elections, he said, “The people who vote do not determine the BVAS but the people who count the votes determine it.
“If the political actors are not ready to play by the rules even the positioning of the BVAS will be hijacked by the non-state actors like we see in many States in South South.
“As in Bayelsa, non-state actors were in charge of election security in the Southern Ijaw Local Government Area. The election is already tainted and has a problem.
“How will BVAS be effective technically and mechanically when we hear people were copying data of voters on their system and so many wrongful inputs during registration of voters? Well, I honestly don’t know if it will result in BVAS compromise.”
