This information is recently being reinforced by feelers from credible sensitive circles that foreigners are being registered stealthily and are collecting their permanent voter’s card (PVC) to vote in Nigeria’s make or mar poll next year.
Just last week, the Southern and Middle Belt Leaders’ Forum made a disturbing claim which substantiated the above allegation.
A statement released by the group stated that based on intelligence report available to them, “a large number of mercenary voters have been registered from neighbouring countries, especially from Niger Republic under the continuous voter registration which could have been one of the reasons why the Federal Government is in a haste to construct a rail from Kano, through Dambatta, Kazaure, Daura, Mashi, Katsina, Jibia and terminate in Maradi, Niger Republic. Money has been appropriated for this in the 2018 budget.”
Up to now, there is no corresponding response from the Federal Government on this weighty allegation. It was the INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, who recently confirmed the story.
Speaking at an election stakeholders’ summit in Abuja, Prof. Yakubu admitted that more than 300 non-Nigerians have been apprehended for attempting to register for PVC and that the Nigerian Immigration Service has been deployed to arrest any foreigner who tried to register. That is where it stops.
It would be recalled too that earlier this year, during the regular quarterly consultative meeting with security agencies, under the auspices of the Inter-agency Consultative Committee On Election Security in March, Prof. Yakubu stated that 299 foreigners who registered to vote on the disguise of being Nigerians have been erased from the voter register.
The exercise followed information received from the Nigeria Immigration Service, according to him.
Like many concerned groups and stakeholders in Nigerian Project, we are worried that months to one of the most crucial elections in Nigeria, allegations are rife that our voters registers contain names of mercenary voters and what we get us lame explanations from the electoral umpire.
No one is being arrested or prosecuted for this criminal act.
From authoritative sources to this medium, this exercise of registering mercenary voters is still ongoing. Needless to say that our electoral process and credibility of 2019 polls have already being imperiled.
We condemn this ugly development and call for full probe of this allegation. It is only anti-democratic forces with sinister agenda, people who are afraid of free and fair election, that are behind this illegality.
We also call on the international community to stand by Nigerian voters against this advance rigging plot through our porous borders.
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