Ahead of the February 25 and March 11 elections, political parties in Nigeria are employing various tactics to win over voters.
Cash and material gifts were popularly employed by parties in previous election seasons, but with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) mopping up cash, parties might now be transferring money to registered voters and collecting their data.
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Sylvanus Okereke (not real name) told FIJ he received N10,000 from the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Thursday.
He said he received an SMS notification from MAlert, a bulk SMS service, on Thursday morning. This message instructed him to “visit https://pollmanager.ng and log in with your phone number to withdraw your funds”.
“The message came during the day, and I just looked at it and ignored,” Okereke told FIJ. “In the night, I got another message with a pin, so I just opened the link to see what it was about.
“When I filled in my phone number and the password they sent, it brought up my details, polling unit, ward, date of birth and gender.”
Okereke said he saw that four voters had already registered on the platform before him, and after he signed in, the number went up to five.
He said he saw the APC logo on the top left of the web page.
Voters registered on the platform before Okereke
He said he noticed on the portal that N10,000 was deposited in his wallet at about 11:56 am, some three hours before he received the message.
He said without thinking too much of it, he withdrew the sum at 8:27 pm and was surprised to receive a credit notification from his bank. The money reached him.
FIJ called the APC Abuja headquarters for comments, but there was no response as of press time. A text message sent to the office was not responded to as well.
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