Atiku Raises the Alarm over Partisanship of PVC, Card Reader Manufacturer

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate in the Presidential election billed for today, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has raised the alarm that the Managing Director of Activate Technologies Limited, Alhaji Mohammed Sani Musa, whose company supplied the machines used in printing the Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) was the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for Niger East Senatorial district for th botched poll.

In a press statement issued on yesterday in Abuja by his Special Assistant on Public Communication, Atiku stated that the revelation was a result of its extensive intelligence gathering network to identify and prevent the ruling party’s brazen and ultimately failed attempts to rig the results.

“It is public knowledge that Sani Musa, popularly known as Sani 313 is a card carrying member of the APC and a close associate of several stalwarts of the party, including President Muhammadu Buhari who apparently pushed his nomination. But shockingly, the APC Senatorial candidate for Zone B of Niger State, Mr. Mohammed Musa, has a contract with INEC to supply key voting materials in an election he is participating in, which is a clear conflict of interest and raises questions of probity and oversight in the issuing of INEC contracts.

“The INEC contract was to ‘upgrade’ the card readers and to print PVC cards. Further investigations have shown that the ‘upgrade’ consisted of pre-programming the card readers to accept fake replica PVCs (copies of genuine PVCs) that the firm printed in Nigeria. These two activities were undertaken so that the APC could boost its vote tally in its strongholds or force votes in Polling Units at PDP strongholds to be null and void by over-voting .

Our investigation also identified the seven states where this activity was due to take place and we have therefore informed the Observer Community and our own extensive network of over 176,000 Party Agents so that they can forestall this activity by checking cards as allowed under INEC guidelines,” Shaibu stated.

“Given that that Mrs. Musa’s previous company, Act Technologies, had a contract to supply and install PVC card printers in the INEC Headquarters, it does beg the question why Mr. Musa’s new company, Activate Technologies, was given a subsequent contract to print PVC cards itself?

Other investigations have revealed that an employee and Director of Activate Technologies and an APC member, Mr. Mohammed Keffi, was filmed at Abuja Airport Domestic Departure Lounge on 29th December opening an official INEC envelope and then handling multiple ballot forms which he was checking off against his mobile phone. Sources also confirmed that this person was one of the people who was loading the fake card numbers into the ‘upgraded’ card readers in the residence of the former Governor of Akwa Ibom, as well as other ‘Card Reader Farms’ in Abuja and Kano. These ‘farms’ are under guard by members of Government Security agencies.”

The PDP Presidential candidate said while Alhaji Sani Musa has the right to hold any public office in spite of his line of business, it was morally unjustifiable to allow a well-known supplier of sensitive INEC materials to partake in an election in which the key materials to be used for the poll were supplied by him.