INEC disassociates self from social media images of under-age voters

THE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has disassociated itself from the current videos and pictures on the social media platforms, showing underage persons thumb-printing ballot papers and voting in an election.

INEC made the clarification in a statement signed by its Director, Voter Education and Publicity, Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi in Abuja on Tuesday.

Osaze-Uzzi said the images which have gone viral did not relate in any way to any election organised, conducted or superintended by the commission.

The director said the commission could not be held directly or vicariously liable for an exercise outside its legal purview.

“It should be pointed out here that local government elections are exclusively the responsibility of the respective State Electoral Commissions, who are in no way under the control and supervision of INEC.

“As far as the commission is concerned, they relate to a local government election conducted at the weekend, over which INEC has no legal control or responsibility whatsoever,” he stated.

Osaze-Uzzi restated the commitment of INEC to sanitising the electoral process of the country.

“The commission remains resolute in its commitment to sanitise the nation’s electoral process and deliver free, fair and credible elections,” he said.

The director said INEC was doing all it could to ensure a credible register of voters.

He said that in addition to running the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), the commission would employ its business process rules to weed unlawful entries.

He said INEC was aware of the challenges encountered in some quarters by prospective registrants in the ongoing nation-wide Continuous Voter Registration (CVR).

Osaze-Uzzi said steps had been taken to ameliorate the situation through the acquisition and deployment of new Direct Data Capture (DDC) machines for registration.

The director said the commission had also increased the number of registration centres in the affected areas.

He appealed to those who did not register in the previous registration exercises to do so now.

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He gave the assurance that the Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) of those who registered in 2017 would be ready for collection in May 2018.