Former Information Minister Labaran Maku has faulted widespread BVAS malfunctions and alleged electoral malpractices during Saturday’s senatorial by-election in Nasarawa State.
Speaking after voting at his Wakama ward polling unit, Maku said his accreditation was smooth but many voters were left stranded.
“Quite a number of people, the BVAS could not capture their fingerprint, and so they’ve been waiting there since morning,” he said.
He told INEC officials to use facial recognition instead, noting that voters’ cards and the register carry both fingerprints and faces. He said similar problems were recorded at Wamba Central and Wamba Clinic.
Maku described the scale of BVAS failures as “strange” for a single-zone election.
“We had many cases of malfunctioning BVAS. They had to send people to look for those who can repair them,” he said.
He also alleged that some BVAS units ran out of data after only 10 voters. “At my own polling unit, we had to volunteer to give data to the INEC staff,” he stated. “These are small things that happen to make us not look serious as a people.”
The former minister cited reports of alleged multiple thumbprinting of ballot papers in Alushi and Wacho, which he said were captured on camera.
While noting that voting was peaceful in many areas, Maku warned that collation is often the flashpoint. “It is when results are being collated that people introduce violence when they see they are not winning,” he said.
He urged security agencies to protect the transfer of results from polling units to the senatorial collation centre.
Maku criticized Nigeria’s “win-at-all-costs” politics, saying incumbents should be delivered by performance, not coercion. “For an incumbent government, it is your policies and development that deliver you. It’s not your officials. I never had any occasion to force people to vote for me. I work hard to meet their needs,” he said.
He also faulted the judiciary’s handling of election petitions.
“The onus of proving rigging lies on you, who was rigged out. The electoral law is infused with technical bottlenecks,” he said.
He referenced the last governorship poll, saying IReV showed a clear winner but courts dismissed the case on technical grounds.
“It’s not about me accepting results. It’s the process that people are concerned about,” Maku said.
“This is not about us winning. It’s about the country winning. It’s about the process winning.”
