Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has introduced a new tactic on ballot paper handling at polling units to check vote buying in the 2019 general elections.
INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmud Yakubu, disclosed this at a public hearing on ‘Vote Buying and Improving Electoral Processes in Nigeria’ in Abuja on Monday.
In the 2019 polls, Yakubu said, the ballot papers would be handed to voters rolled up before they proceed to the polling booths to cast their votes.
He explained that the voters, in turn, must also roll up and flatten the ballot papers before leaving the polling booths to drop them in the ballot boxes.
Yakubu said, it would guard against the electorate displaying thump-printed ballot papers to agents of vote buyers at the polling units.
“Since 1999, we have had several confessional statements by many partisan actors on how an electoral process is subverted and voters and electoral personnel are induced.
“They do this through food items, kitchen utensils, automobiles, electrical appliances, clothing toiletries, sandwich and so on.
“By sandwich I am not talking about food. There is a way candidates induce voters using two slices of bread; sandwiched in between the two slices is a currency note,” Yakubu said, according to NAN.