By Ogar Monday
The Cross River State chapter of the Inter-party Advisory Council, IPAC, and the State Government are at loggerheads over the validity or not of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS sent to the State.
IPAC alleged that the Independent Electoral Commission, INEC, in the State is working towards swaying the elections towards the party in power, saying that it suspects that the Commission had made the voting machines available to the State Government and it, therefore has been compromised.
In a strongly worded press statement on the 24th of January, 2023, signed by Ntami Esege, State Secretary of IPAC, the group alleged that the INEC REC, Prof. Gabriel Yomere, had played a fast one on them when he agreed to the group inspecting the machines sent to the State, when the group raised fears that agents of the State might have had access to it, only to call a press conference the next day claiming that the machines were intact.
Subsequently, IPAC on the 6th of February, 2023, in a press conference, in Calabar the Cross River State capital, gave the electoral body a 24-hours ultimatum to allow it to inspect the machines.
Anthony Bisong, the State Chairman of the group while speaking said, “ We approached the REC exactly two weeks ago to ascertain the real state of the BVAS. He told us his side of the story after which we demanded to inspect the BVAS to see things for ourselves. The REC gleefully accepted and asked us to return to the secretariat by 2pm the following day to inspect the machines in the company of the Police and DSS. But on arriving at the INEC secretariat the next day, we were barred from seeing the BVAS.
“In reaction to this action by the electoral umpire, we unanimously stormed out of the meeting and immediately addressed the press. We demand that the only way we can trust the Commission going forward is to inspect the BVAS and take a record of the IMEI on all 3281 machines.
“We give the REC 24 hours to allow political parties to inspect the BVAS in addition to taking full record of the IMEI number.”
But in a swift reaction, the Cross River State Government tackled the group, accusing them of being “paid merchants of blackmail.”
In a release signed by Linus Obogo, the Deputy Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, the State Government insisted that at no point did the BVAS machine make its way to the Governor’s house.
The statement reads in part, “for the record and just as it is worth stating for the umpteenth time, that there was never a time BVAS machines were found or sighted at Government House, Calabar.
“The last time we checked, Government House, Calabar was not designated as INEC office, and neither was it an annex of INEC office to custody or warehouse its equipment for elections.”
They accused IPAC of being “a willing tool for hire” as “we have since found out on good authority that a princely sum of N50 million was offered to the Inter-Party Advisory body by its paymaster to reactivate this falsehood.”
The release further states that the State Government views the “opposition’s endless fantasy about the presence of BVAS at the Government House, Calabar, as a product of their devilish, delusional and psychotic minds,” saying that the “APC does not require any form of programmed assistance of BVAS to win elections in the State as it has been working and campaigning hard for its impending victory.”