As ballot snatching mars convention
The Chairman of the Election Sub-Committee of the APC, a sitting Governor from a NorthWest State has been caught privately taking custody of ballot papers and signing them without other members of the committee being aware!
He was reported to have produced the ballot papers although members of the committee were meant to have witnessed the signing and stamping the ballot boxes openly.
Here is a narrative of what happened by a member of the Election Committee who asked that his name not be mentioned:
- The Gov of Kebbi alone brought in most of the volunteers for the work. In fact, some of us had to force our way to also bring in 5 volunteers while he alone brought 50 people.
- He took custody of the ballot papers and signed them without anybody aware. He just produced the ballot papers and he had told us earlier that we shall be involved in the stamping (customized) of the papers for additional security, but he did it alone.
- There were also many instances of delegates taking snapshots of their ballot papers after voting. When confronted about this, as it is against our rules, the Governor who is the head of the Election Committee said we should leave the matter, claiming we can’t enforce the rule.
- Someone was caught with ballot papers in his pocket and ran but I think he was caught, not sure. But no diligent pursuit of the matter at all.
- We have claims of those volunteers he brought in filling ballot papers for people in Katsina and Kano, this is also against the rule we publicly agreed to.
- As Election Committee we didn’t brief the agents about any of our rules before voting started. This I believe is very flawed and process compromised.
Now all of this was observed within the first hour of the voting at the Eagle Square venue of the APC Presidential primaries.