The Resident Electoral Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission in Osun State, Dr Mutiu Agboke, has revealed that some politicians and INEC staff connived to deliberately bypass BVAS during the governorship elections in the state.
Agboke, disclosed this at the palace of Oluwo of Iwo, Oba Abdulrosheed Akanbi, during a visit to the royal father on Tuesday, emphasizing that “Politicians in connivance with our staff members deliberately bypassed the BVAS.
“It was this BVAS that exposed over-voting during the Osun election. So with this judgment of the tribunal, we have known how over-voting can happen. We are going to beam our searchlight on those staff members and I can assure you that all of us should own the process together. This is the way we can correct these anomalies.”
He told a stakeholders’ meeting held with chairmen of political parties in Osun State at the INEC state office in Osogbo on Wednesday, Agboke that once BVAS was not used and a vote was cast, over-voting would occur.
Agboke revealed that the judgment of the Election Petition Tribunal which annulled the outcome of the July 16 poll in the state, exposed how over voting can occur.
The REC, in a video clip of the speech he made at the palace of Oluwo, obtained in Osogbo on Wednesday also said He said, “It was BVAS that helped INEC to expose those who carried out over-voting on election day. So it was not the BVAS that created the problem, that should be corrected. Based on that ruling, we have identified some inadequacies from the politicians, voters, our staff and our responsibility is to ensure that we cover all these gaps so that the votes of the Osun people can speak for them.
“So I want to tell Osun people that the over-voting was not orchestrated by BVAS. We did not use BVAS to vote or cast our ballot. Our ballot was manual voting; over-voting was caused by fraudulent people that came to vote on election day. They are criminally minded.
