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The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has banned mobile phones, cameras and other recording devices in polling booths during Saturday’s governorship election in Osun State, western Nigeria.
INEC’s Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, this week in Osogbo, the state capital, said the move is intended to curb the acts of vote-buying and vote-selling – a new strategy adopted by politicians to rig elections.
Voters are allowed to use their mobile devices at the polling units but are barred from using same once they are issued with ballot papers until they cast their marked ballots inside the ballot boxes.
the INEC chairman said while “malpractices like ballot snatching, ballot stuffing, hijacking of electoral materials and the rest have been considerably reduced,” vote buying with selling is a new evil the commission is forced to contend from immediate past experiences.
“The menace of vote buying is now a new concept in our electoral system, and I can assure you that the commission will rise to these challenges,” said Yakubu, adding: “I want to make clarification on the use of mobile phones, we are restricting its usage from the time a voter gets ballot paper and cast his vote, in which the device will be returned thereafter.”
In all, 48 political parties are participating in the election in Osun State, the highest record in the country so far for parties participating in an election.
“Our ultimate objective is to ensure that the choice of who governs the people of Osun in the next four years is in the hands of the electorate,” said Yakubu while adding that the commission had achieved 73 per cent collection of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) by eligible voters in preparation for the governorship election in Osun.
