A former Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) for Akwa-Ibom State of the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC), Mike Igini, has said that the newly introduced Bi-modal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) would curtail rigging and other forms of electoral manipulations commonly perpetrated by politicians.
The former REC, who made this known in a published opinion article yesterday, said, “The 2022 Electoral Act, INEC processes and procedures have returned power of the ballot fully to voters at the polling units, where elections will now be won or lost, and not at wards, LGAs and other stages or points of result collation centres, which in the past have been centres where voters collective will were upturned and disempowered for decades.
According to him, “All the loopholes for rigging and manipulating elections have been blocked by INEC. We must build on the progress we have made so far in our fledgling democracy. Igini explained that democracy would not be complete without the rule of law; adding that the best way to fight the ills of democracy was through more democracy.
The former INEC Commissioner called on all who have not collected their PVCs yet to do so, to be able to vote in the forthcoming general elections.
“The future direction of Nigeria is up to you all, the people, to decide in the coming elections. Nigerians must not dissolve into despair but resolve to act firmly, by using the PVC in the forthcoming elections”, he emphasised.
