Politicians resorted to vote buying in the 2019 election following the level of strict measures put in place against rigging by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, ahead of the electoral exercise.
This was made known on Tuesday by Mr. Rotimi Oyekanmi, Chief Press Secretary to the National Chairman of INEC, Mahmood Yakubu, while speaking at the public presentation and media stakeholders’ roundtable of “Trends in Reportage of Post 2019 Election Issues (scorecard for July – September 2019),” in Lagos.
Ayokanmi said committed to ensuring credible elections, INEC had put in place some necessary measures to ensure transparency and make rigging difficult.
That, according to him, included providing voter’s cards which had adequate security symbols which made it difficult to be cloned.
He indicated that it was as a result of the inability to clone the voter’s cards that politicians resorted to vote buying.
Ayokanmi also spoke about the need to ensure that elections were made more credible.
Blaming politicians for the violence and other malpractices that characterize elections in the country, he said, elections would be made credible if they decided to make it so.
“Trends in Reportage of Post 2019 Election Issues (scorecard for July – September 2019)” was produced by the International Press Centre, IPC, as a part of efforts at improving post election coverage.
Dr. Tunde Akanni, Senior Lecturer, School of Communication, Lagos State University, LASU, did an expert review of the document while Ayokanmi was one of the panelists.
