Festus Okoye Explains Difficulty Faced During Cross River By-election

Mr Festus Okoye, the INEC National Electoral Commissioner for information and Voter Education, has denied rigging the by-election for the Ogoja-Yala federal constituency in favour of the ruling All Progressive Congress, APC in Cross River State.

The chairman of opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP Cross River State, Venatius Ikem, had few days ago addressed a news conference in Calabar, accusing the INEC commissioner who supervised the two by-elections of 26 February, 2022, of compromising his office and rigging the exercise for the APC.

Reacting, Okoye, while Speaking over a private radio station in Calabar, Sparkling FM, said, “Nothing can be farther from the truth.”

According to him: “The challenge we had was that some of the political parties did not make provision for vehicles to accompany the voting materials to the polling units (PU). So, at each stage, the two major political parties had their representatives at the PU.

“These anxiety and anger arose because those who used to hawk voting materials like permanent voters’ cards did not have opportunity to corrupt the system this time around because of BVAS.

“BVAS was able to read the face and fingerprints of accredited voters. In the event that the machine could not do so, it means that the person would have been involved in identity theft, meaning that he was not registered at that PU, and the voter card he was holding was not his.

“That’s why you saw the level of contest and consistency in the numbers of votes scored by each party. Compare this with what used to occur when we used Incident Form. So, it tells you that those that vote at each PU were those registered there,”

Also Read: INEC: Festus Okoye Denies Rigging By-Election for APC