Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Attahiru Jega has come out to say that the permanent voter cards (PVCs) to be used for next month’s election can be cloned, but such cloning will amount to nothing as the commission’s machines will not be able to read them.
He made the revelation while conducting an interview with an Abuja-based magazine, Metropole and comes just days after the Department of State Services (DSS) raided an All Progressives Congress (APC) office, alleging that the party had plans to clone the PVCs and hack into INEC’s database.
Jega said: “DSS did not say INEC reported. DSS are in the business of intelligence gathering and security and evidently through their own sources had something to make them act the way that they did. We did not report it. We didn’t ask them to do it and we didn’t know anything like that was happening.
“All I can say is that I know the investment that we made on the permanent voters’ cards, and it is very difficult if not impossible for anybody to clone it. If people clone the card, how are they going to get it read? You can clone it and make it look like an INEC card visibly but the card has to be read on election day using a card reader.
“You must have the card reader and the configuration and everything to do it, and it’s simply impossible. But that notwithstanding, this does not take away from the security agency for trying to do what they believe is their job.”
