Card Reader test: APC cloning PVCs – PDP alleges

Card Reader test: APC cloning PVCs – PDP alleges

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The leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has accused
the All Progressives Congress (APC) of cloning Permanent Voters Cards (PVC) ahead of the general elections.

At a news conference in Abuja on Tuesday, the national deputy chairman ofnthe ruling party, Mr Uche Secondus, said that the rejected PVCs during last weekend’s mock card reader’s exercise had substantiated what the Department of State Services (DSS) said about the APC cloning of voter cards in Lagos State, Nigeria’s commercial city in the south- west.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had detected
some cloned PVCs which failed to pass the card reader test during
last week’s exercise in Port Harcourt and Osun State.

The INEC had subjected the card reader machines, which it planned to
use in the forthcoming elections, to test to see if the device could be
trusted during the elections.

While the INEC was yet to officially announce its position on whether
to go ahead with the use of the device, several political pressure
groups, including the PDP are insisting that the errors recorded during
the card readers’ test are too huge to be neglected.

But the APC is not keeping quiet over the accusation either, as the
spokesman for the party, Mr Lai Mohammed, said the allegations were
inanities and that the party would not respond to such claims.

The APC National Publicity Secretary, in a statement on Tuesday
evening said, “As a government in waiting, we are busy investing our
time and energy finding solutions to the myriad of problems and
hardship occasioned by six years of President Jonathan’s failed
administration.”

He advised Nigerians not to listen to PDP governors as most of them,
according to him, have nothing to offer the country again.

The Department of State Services (DSS) had raided the APC’s office
in Lagos, in January, taking away materials which it later said findings
showed that there was an elaborate plan by the APC to inflate its
membership data ahead of the February 2015 general elections.

The All Progressives Congress (APC) dismissed, as hogwash, the
findings of the DSS presented to the media.

The opposition party said that the findings were great disservice to
Nigeria and an embarrassment to all intelligence-gathering
organisations around the world.