PDP and PVC

Any wonder the President and his team are blaming everyone but themselves for their woes. They are savagely attacking Professor Attahiru Muhammed Jega, the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) who has recently found some liver to stand up to their mindless pressure and despicable games. First, they blackmailed him to abandon his […]

Any wonder the President and his team are blaming everyone but themselves for their woes. They are savagely attacking Professor Attahiru Muhammed Jega, the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) who has recently found some liver to stand up to their mindless pressure and despicable games. First, they blackmailed him to abandon his decision to create additional polling stations across the country to ease voting. Then they ordered him to print the ballot paper for the 2015 elections with state company “to create employment”; next they used the Armed Forces Service Chiefs to force him to grant them another six weeks to campaign!
However, all of this has left the PDP disappointed in the face of relentless seizure of political space by the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC). For the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), it’s the PVC stupid! Nothing has unsettled this ruling party than the insistence by INEC that only the Permanent Voters Card will be used for the 2015 elections. More ominously for the PDP, INEC is going to deploy card readers that will only read PVCs issued by the commission.
The single reason why PDP is heatedly opposed to PVC is because the use of the card significantly reduces the chances of multiple voting. This also means that should the PDP or any other desperate group produce their own PVCs to rig the election in their favour, INEC’s card readers will detect such and so it will be a futile exercise. But the PDP won’t let go. Just last week, the Senate Leader, Victor Ndoma Egba, (PDP, Cross River) said his party was against the use of PVCs in the 2015 elections because it amounted to electronic voting and would contravene the law. At his behest, the Senate invited the INEC chairman to demonstrate how the PVC and card reader work, and he did so to the satisfaction of the Senators. The INEC chairman has also assured the Senators that the commission is on solid legal ground as far as the use of PVC and card readers is concerned. Thus, whereas the accreditation process could be said to be automated, the actual voting itself remains manual as the voter will still collect his ballot, thumbprint his choice and then drop the paper in the ballot box. How this amounts to electronic voting is unclear. Yet Ndoma Egba claims that he is a lawyer.
The PDP’s sickening opposition to the use of PVC is unprincipled and comical. This is a party that claims that it will use technology to curb corruption; this is the party that says we cannot go back to the past. One of the PDP’s campaign messages says: “Let’s keep going, Forwards.” The use of PVC for election should qualify as going forwards, in consonance with the above PDP message; contrariwise, the use of TVC equals to going backwards. So, why should a party that wants to go forward be afraid of the use of PVC for election in 2015? Why should a modern, digital President who detests old ways of doing things, reject the use of PVC in an election he’s contesting? Here is a President who says he is current, digital and a scientist, yet his men want us to use Temporary Voters Cards (TVC) to vote, in 2015!
All efforts to get the INEC chairman to drop the use of PVC for the impending elections have failed and now anti-democratic elements, especially those fronting for the ruling party have been mobilised to launch malicious attacks against his person. Jega is now being reproached for holding a phantom meeting with the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), presumably to rig the election in favour of the APC candidate. The lead in this game of chicken is one Chukwuemeka Ezeife, a self-confessed Jonathan partisan, who has failed to bring any evidence to back his claim. Can Jega be that naive to meet or implement NEF agenda in the 2015 elections?
As for the huge rate of collection of PVCs in the North East and North West, it is simply because the people are dead set on voting Jonathan out. Conversely, the people of South East and South-South have failed to collect their PVCs because they have no enthusiasm for this election, certain that candidate Jonathan, having failed to fulfil his promises and inspire confidence can no longer ride on ethnic and religious sentiments to win, and  is headed for defeat this March. Surely, Ezeife had seen the multitudes that welcomed Buhari when he went to Maiduguri, notwithstanding the contrived insecurity. Everywhere Buhari went, he urged voters to collect their PVCs and vote out corruption, insecurity and unemployment. Weeping women who welcomed Buhari to Maiduguri were said to have begged him to save them from death and destruction, notwithstanding the fact that the commander-in-chief and his troops have suddenly rediscovered the prowess to fight the Boko Haram extremists.
In the meantime, only PDP and its spin doctors continue to delude themselves that they can win these elections using might as they did in Ekiti, or as reported by February 22nd Sunday Trust, the huge sums of money – N668 million in Kaduna; N590 million in Kano; N615 million in Katsina; N620 million in Sokoto; N610 million in Kebbi, etc, to bribe voters. Thus, the stage is set for an unfair election but how much will the PDP spend to persuade the “motor park tout”, Olusegun Obasanjo, to return to the party?