By Cynthia Johnson
The Labour Party in Imo State has protested at the Ikenegbu Girls Polling Unit, alleging that the polling unit officers trained on how to use the BVAS (Bimodal Voter Accreditation System) have been swapped.
As learned by Quest Times, party members are of the belief that this is a ploy by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to rig the election in favor of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Paul Onyewuchi, a member of the Labour Party, told reporters that he was surprised to see that the polling unit personnel deployed to the voting center were changed on the morning of the election.
Chibuikem Diala, the spokesperson for the Labour Party’s governorship candidate when contacted, alleged that INEC was doing the same thing in all the polling units.
He said that the campaign organization had discovered that the actual polling unit officers already trained by INEC were dropped abruptly and people who did not take part in INEC’s training were being deployed to conduct the election exercise.
Diala also alleged that the RATECH team, which is responsible for the BVAS, plans to compromise the devices for use in today’s election.
“The Senator Athan Achonu Media Centre wishes to alert security agents and patriotic INEC staff, especially those sent from outside Owerri for this election, about plans already concluded to compromise the BVAs for use for today’s election by the RATECH team,” Diala said.
He added that the campaign organization had received intelligence from some local government areas in Owerri Federal Constituency that the technical team in those LGAs is discussing issuing wrong passwords to some of the ad hoc staff for the election.
The Labour Party has called on security agents and patriotic INEC staff to be vigilant and to prevent any attempts to rig the election.