THE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has dismissed allegations that uncollected Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) were handed over to the All Progressives Congress (APC) for distribution to non-indigenes ahead of the ongoing Ekiti State governorship election, describing the claims as baseless and misleading.
The reaction followed a viral video by Mr. Isaac Fayose, who alleged that the electoral commission released uncollected PVCs to the APC to enable non-indigenes participate in Saturday’s governorship election in the state.
News Point Nigeria reports that INEC officials familiar with the election process insisted that the allegation reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how elections are currently conducted in Nigeria, particularly under the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS).
According to the officials, the claim that an individual can obtain another person’s PVC, walk into a polling unit and cast a vote is impossible under existing electoral laws and technological safeguards.
They explained that the era of proxy voting, ghost voters and arbitrary thumbprinting effectively ended with the introduction of hardware-level biometric verification, which requires every voter to undergo strict identity checks before being accredited.
The officials stressed that possession of a PVC alone does not entitle anyone to vote, noting that a voter card is useless in the hands of an impostor regardless of how it was obtained.
“It does not matter if a political party has a million uncollected cards; those cards cannot be used to manipulate the ballot because a piece of plastic alone does not grant access to a ballot paper,” a senior electoral official said.
For clarity, the official explained that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System serves as the ultimate gatekeeper at every polling unit across the country.
Under the current voting procedure, voters must successfully complete a two-stage biometric verification process before they can be issued ballot papers.
The process requires the BVAS device to either authenticate a voter’s fingerprint or verify facial features against the biometric information contained in INEC’s database.
According to the official, where the biometric details do not correspond with the identity linked to a specific PVC, the BVAS automatically rejects the individual and prevents voting.
He added that no election official or human intervention can override or bypass the biometric security architecture embedded in the device.
The commission also clarified the status of uncollected PVCs in Ekiti State, stating that all cards not collected during the recently concluded distribution exercise have been retrieved, properly accounted for and secured.
According to the official, the uncollected PVCs are currently being kept under lock and key at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and will remain there until the election process is fully concluded.
The official urged members of the public to disregard what he described as false narratives capable of creating unnecessary panic and eroding public confidence in the electoral process.
“We urge the public to completely disregard these phantom narratives, which are clearly designed to cause unnecessary panic and undermine public confidence.
“INEC remains a completely neutral umpire, our technology is secure, and we assure the people of Ekiti State that only valid voters who are physically accredited by the BVAS will determine the outcome of today’s election,” the senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.
The commission maintained that the integrity of the electoral process remains protected by technological safeguards and reiterated its commitment to conducting a free, fair and credible governorship election in Ekiti State.