WE WILL PROSECUTE HOLDERS OF FAKE CARDS - INEC

The Independent National Electoral Commission has said that it will prosecute anyone found parading fake permanent voter’s card during next month’s general elections.The commission said its card readers were designed to identify and reject any voter’s card that it did not issue, saying holders of such counterfeit cards would be handed over to security operatives for prosecution.

The Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Mr. Kayode Idowu, gave the warning in a telephone interview with our correspondent on Thursday.

Idowu said the card readers would not read fake cards and any card that is not read by the card readers would not be allowed to be used to vote.

He said, “It is a criminal offence to present or attempt to use a fake voter’s card for voting. Every electoral offence has a penalty. It is a criminal offence and the security agencies will be invited, but the bottom line, as far as our own process is concerned, is that fake cards cannot be used because our card readers have been designed to reject any card INEC did not issue.

“People make all manners of allegations of card cloning, but we are just reassuring the public that even if that was done, it will be filtered and the perpetrators would be made to face the law.”

Idowu also explained that the PVC would be used for the verification and authentication of voters, saying the process would ease the voting exercise, as it is an improvement on the way previous elections were conducted.

He said, “It is a two-stage process; when the card is swiped on the card reader, the data of the owner that is already stored on the card will pop up on the screen of the reader, and for that information to pop up on that screen is a confirmation that the card is produced by INEC, which is the verification.

“The next step is to check that the person who brings the card is the rightful owner, so when the person’s finger print is taken and it matches the one on the card’s chip through the reader, and it says verified, that is when the card can be used to vote. But when it says ‘not verified’, that card cannot be used.”