Police stop printing of five million fake voters cards

Nigeria's police authorities said on Friday they had seized more than 100,000 fake voters cards and halted the process to print a total of five million such cards to subvert the vote in coming general elections.

Lagos State police spokesman, Emmanuel Ighodalo, said the discovery was made when detectives raided a business centre in a suburb of Nigeria's commercial capital following a tip off. He said three people overseeing the printing were arrested.

"We are now looking for a man said to be a retired army colonel that contracted the job to print the documents," Ighodalo told reporters.

It is not clear yet what political affiliation the prime suspect has. But both the police and officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said the forgery was ingenious and could pass for genuine voters' cards.

The discovery further confirms widespread concern that certain interest groups have put in place machinery to rig general elections scheduled to be held between April and May across Africa's most populous country of 120 million.

The first signs emerged during last September's voter registration exercise when malpractices aimed at rigging were reported from different parts of the country.

There were reports that unscrupulous politicians had connived with lower ranking electoral officials to divert registration materials. Some observers reported that, in many centres, officials either appeared to sign up too many people too quickly or were registering under-aged people.

INEC confirmed last week that more than two million registrations were invalidated for being fake or irregular. It then announced a supplementary exercise registrsation exercise for 21 to 23 January to cover people who could not register during the last exercise.

The coming elections represent a key test for Nigeria as another attempt at successful transition of power from civilian government to another. Previous attempts were marred by rigging and electoral violence, leading to military takeover of government from civilians.