CUPP indicts APC over fake voters’ registration, plot to sack INEC Chair, stop use of BIVAS

The Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) has alleged that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has hatched a secret plan to rig the 2023 general elections in its favour.

CUPP said the three-pronged plan include fake registration of voters, sack of the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, if he does not accede to the plan and the use of a secret suit to stop the deployment of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BIVAS) during the elections.

Spokesperson of CUPP, Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere, told a press conference on Wednesday, in Abuja, that following credible intelligence, the opposition coalition of political parties in Nigeria, was able to unravel the fraudulent activities by the APC, including the secret suit, filed at the Owerri Federal High Court, since August 24, 2022.

Ugochinyere displayed extracts of the national voters’ register, which he claimed were part of at least 10 million fake registrations done by the APC, across the states of the federation where the party is in power.

The opposition said the names were sourced from both within and outside Nigeria including some African countries such as Ghana, Cameroon, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Togo, Guinea and Gambia and countries outside Africa, including Jamaica, Brazil and New Zealand.

According to the group, significant among the discoveries in the register was the fact that majority of the foreign names were all born in 1983, notwithstanding whether their photographs showed they were old or young.

The CUPP spokesman said many names in the register were also shown to have been born between 1900 and 1914, yet their photographs were those of young people, adding that many male photos had their gender written as female and vice versa.

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The opposition further alleged that Prof Yakubu has come under pressure for INEC to announce a change to its hard stands on the compulsory use of the BVAS machines for accreditation or get sacked as Chairman.

“We state that the discovery we have made goes beyond the case of double registration. It is a monumental compromise of the national voters’ register by chieftains of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

“The last leg of the plot is also the sack of the INEC Chairman through the courts. A plot that would be accomplished where the man insists or continues as an unbiased umpire,” Ugochinyere told the media.

He said that intelligence intercepted by CUPP revealed that hatchers of the plot may have now settled for the INEC Chairman to be sacked through suspension, as they know they cannot get the required numbers from the National Assembly for an outright sack.

The opposition consequently called on international partners, local and international observer groups, the civil society and the general public to help protect Nigeria’s democracy as, according to it, the success of any of these plots will erode the integrity and credibility of the electoral process and deny Nigerians the sovereign right to freely choose their leaders.

Below is the alleged court process said to have been filed with a view to scuttling the use of the BVAS machines.