Underage voters, parents will be arrested for electoral fraud

In order to prevent electoral fraud in the general elections of 2023, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced that all parents of invalid voters and minor voters will be detained.

Festus Okoye, National Commissioner for INEC and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, issued the warning while appearing on the television show “Sunrise Daily.”

Underage voters were cautioned by the INEC commissioner to avoid polling places during the general election or face prosecution.

“We have made it very clear that any person who is obviously underage should not approach any of our polling places on election day,” he stated.

“If the person does show up, they will be detained along with their parents for encouraging such a scheme.”

The Permanent Voters Cards (PVC) purchase and VIN harvesting participants were further disqualified by the Commission (VIN).

“Those who harvest registered voters’ Voter Identification Numbers (VINs) are doing so in vain,” he warned.

“Why are they collecting and purchasing VINs when we exhibited the voter registrations for claims and objections and published the VINs in our local government areas and in our registration areas? There are those VINs.

We have been quite clear that this Commission would use the BVAS for voter identification and authentication, and that the BvAS, not the PVCs, will house the information for each and every registered voter in Nigeria, per voting unit.

On election day, the Presiding Officer will simply look at the final six digits of your PVC and use those to retrieve your VIN and retrieve your data from the BVAS.”