INEC agrees voter register not used in Kano LG election, silent on ending crime
The underage voter controversies trailing the recently conducted Local Government elections in Kano State which apparently coincided with similar claims by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2015 presidential election may take time to settle, if the comments of the chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Mahmood Yakubu is anything to go by.
This stemmed from the fact that the chairman has blamed the Kano State Independent Electoral Commission (KASIEC) for the local government election in which underage voters were said to have participated in.
While revealing the weekend, the findings of the committee set up to investigate allegations of underage voting in Kano State, Prof Yakubu said while it could not be established if children actually voted in the election, he could confirm that the voter register which INEC gave to the Kano electoral body for undertaking the election was not completely used.
Whereas the Chairman of KASIEC, Prof. Garba Sheka, failed to speak on the matter for no given reason shortly after the briefing by INEC boss, Prof Yakubu agreed that in some areas, the voter register was not used at all and there was no voter accreditation but there were election results.
Though he claimed absence of underage voters on INEC’s register for Kano State, he averred that “Kano State Independent Electoral Commission requested for and received from INEC the Kano State register of voters for the election. The register was produced for use for the elections.
“However, the register was only sighted in a few polling units. In other words, the register was not used in most of the polling units. In fact, accreditation using the Permanent Voter Cards largely did not take place.
According to him, “Given that the register was substantially not used to accredit voters before voting, it is logical to conclude that if underage voting occurred in the election, it was not due to any presence of underage registrants on the register of voters.”
Though he was silent on any form of punishment for the State electoral body, INEC boss further claimed that there was a reason to believe that the pictures circulating on the social media showing children voting were actually old photos.
In his further submission, INEC said “After examining some of the images in circulation, the committee found that they had been available long before the Kano local government elections. The few images and video clips from Kano show no accreditation of voters or any relationship with the register of voters.”
Business Hilights recalls that the PDP had last week, called on INEC to make public, its findings on the allegations of underage voting during the recent Kano State Local Government elections, saying the level of under voting that greeted the election is similar with what happened during 2015 election and warned against repeat in 2019.
