The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has threatened to publish the names of anyone who engages in vote buying in the Osun State gubernatorial election slated for September 22.
According to the national commissioner of voter education and publicity, Solomon Soyebi in an interview on Channels TV on Tuesday, the commission will make sure such defaulters are prosecuted according to the law.
PREMIUM TIMES reported cases of vote buying in the last governorship election conducted in Ekiti State. This newspaper also published videos and interviews of vote buying by officials of the two major parties in the Ekiti election, APC and PDP.
In his interview, the INEC official also disclosed that the polling booths in the upcoming Osun State governorship election will be re-designed to discourage vote buying. He and strongly warned residents and political parties against vote buying/selling.
“We are trying to re-engineer our voting cubicle and ballot box in such a way that it becomes difficult to see who a voter votes for”.
“We are going to see the redesigned polling booths in Osun State first.
“We have just 20 days to Osun State election and we are assuring them that anybody who engages in vote buying will get his name published and this time around we won’t be quiet about it,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mr Soyebi advised residents of the state to carry out their civic responsibility peacefully, assuring them that INEC is bent on conducting a free, fair and credible election.
He stating clearly that there won’t be a repeat of what happened in Edo and Ekiti States respectively.
