Ahead of next year’s general elections, the coalition of Civil Society Organisation (CSO) in Kano State has raised alarm over the activities of desperate politicians, who it said have resorted to buying Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) from their owners in the state.
President of coalition, Ibrahim Waiya, who made the allegation yesterday in a chart with The Guardian, revealed that politicians were mopping up PVCs to perpetrate electoral fraud during the elections.
Waiya, who was not specific on the identity and political party of those involved in the act, said investigation by the CSOs discovered a culture of impunity across all the major political parties.
“As you can see, the general elections are draw closer and politicians are becoming more and more desperate and dangerous, using legal or illegal, moral or immoral means to return in 2019. From our observation, the politicians are now entrenched in the culture of vote-buying. It is so bad such that politicians now negotiate with the electorate.
“Apart from buying and selling the cards/votes, politicians are also issuing forms with the sole aim of empowerment scheme, especially to women after they have collected their PVCs in return.
“In some instances, they enter an agreement with the electorate with the sole intents of voting them during elections. This is the situation we have found ourselves in this part of the country,” he explained.For those citing poverty and illiteracy as major reasons why some electorate sell their voting right, Waiya believed such peculiarities were not enough excuse for them to mortgage their future and that of the generate yet upon.
Waiya, who is also the executive director of Citizen for Development and Education (CDE), said the group has petitioned the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Kano State office, for urgent intervention.He hinted that the umbrella body of CSOs is planning to organise public social responsibility platform that would set agenda for political aspirants in the state and also involve social contract, which any aspirant seeking the support of a particular community would sign to executive the moment he or she is voted to power, empowering the electorate in the process.
“The idea is to hold the politicians accountable to the immediate communities they represent. The aspirants will be made to enter social contract that will be legally strapped .“Failure of the politician to meet the demands of the community within a specific period will attract immediate consequence, which is recalling the affected representative,” Waiya emphasised.
