Osun State Governor Ademola Adeleke has raised an alarm over what he describes as a coordinated, illegal operation by the state’s APC to buy up voters’ cards and extract their PIN numbers, warning the scheme is designed to disenfranchise voters ahead of the August 15 election.
In a statement, Adeleke accused the Osun APC and its agents of offering monetary rewards to induce residents to hand over their voters’ cards, citing multiple reports from across the state’s 30 local governments and area office, and warned the public never to part with their cards. He said the scheme specifically extracts PIN numbers from voters’ cards through cash incentives and appears targeted at local governments with strong Accord Party support, calling on the electoral commission to take note of the development.
Separately, Adeleke’s spokesperson Olawale Rasheed dismissed as false, reckless and deliberately misleading a claim from House of Representatives member Emmanuel Omirin alleging he had facilitated a N12 billion federal payment to the governor, calling it a baseless fabrication that raises more questions than it answers. Rasheed challenged Omirin to state clearly, with credible evidence, what the alleged sum was meant for, in what official capacity he claims to have facilitated it, and under what legal authority such a transaction would have occurred, arguing that sensational claims without evidence may serve political propaganda but do not amount to truth, and that public discourse should be guided by facts, responsibility and respect for people’s intelligence.
