Anastasia Okechukwu Reporting
The senator-elect for Abia south senatorial district, Sen. Enyinnaya Abariba on Monday, disclose how the introduction of Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), and the cash crunch caused by the cashless policy was instrumental to his victory in the just concluded 2023 general election.
Abariba, while speaking in a two-days seminar organised by Media Educational Development Initiative for Africa with the theme, “Peace Journalism and Consolidation of Democracy in Nigeria,” for a select few journalists in Abuja, said he benefited from the BVAS because manufacturing and manipulation of result during the election was impossible and the cash crunch made it impossible for his rivals to have cash for vote buying.
“I will say I benefited as someone who ran against a governor in a state, from the use of BVAS and the fact that you couldn’t manufacture results”.
“Secondly, I benefited from the fact that the federal government through the CBN, advertently or inadvertently made it impossible for people not to have cash. What that meant was that, for whoever was my opponent, the governor of the state and all that, all the monies that were mapped out for elections, couldn’t reach the people they could use to buy vote. At the areas they got some funds, all the people they transferred funds to, saw it as their own and so they walked away with it, those who were given dollars to change also walked away with the dollars. So on the day of election, all of us were on the same page and the same level. And that was what gave me the chance to even compete. Because, we always knew what was going to happen.”.
He noted that technology is right but the Federal Government should eliminate human interference after voting process, and further advice that the government should prioritize electronic voting so that collations, addition of results will no longer be in anybody’s hands.
The Senator also attributed is victory to what he called the Obi-Datti tsunami in the southeast, that led to the premature retirement of some politicians.