Opposition coalition, the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) has raised the alarm over moves to use secret court action to stop the use of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machine in the upcoming 2023 general election.
Addressing a world press conference, CUPP spokesman Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere said the vigilance team of the group, following credible intelligence, discovered the Suit at the Owerri Federal High Court where it was filed since August 24, 2022.
The group also displayed extracts of the national voters’ register which it claimed were part of at least 10 million fake registrations done by one of the political parties.
He said the names were sourced from both within and outside Nigeria including some African countries such as Ghana, Cameroon, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Togo, Guinea, and the Gambia, and countries outside Africa including Jamaica, Brazil, and New Zealand.
Ugochinyere also showed several registrations which were captured from passport photographs and other photos.
He said “Significant among the discoveries in the register is the fact that the majority of the foreign names were all born in 1983 despite whether their photographs showed they were old or young.
“Many people were also shown to have been born between 1900 and 1914 yet their photographs were those of young people.
“Equally, many male photos had their gender written as female and vice versa.”
The group further alleged that the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Mahmood Yakubu, is under pressure for the commission to announce a change to the commission’s stance on the compulsory use of the BVAS machine for accreditation or get sacked as chairman of the commission.
Ugochinyere said the intelligence the CUPP intercepted which led to discovery of the suit seeking to nullify the use of BVAS and exposure of the massive compromise in the voters’ register cannot now be wrong that the third leg of the plot is to sack the INEC chairman through a suspension as they plotters know they cannot get the required numbers from the National Assembly for an outright sack.
The group thereafter called on international partners, local and international observer groups, civil society, and the general public to intervene in the matter and protect democracy as the success of any of these plots will erode the integrity and credibility of the electoral process and deny Nigerians the sovereign right to freely choose their leaders.
