Auchi (Edo), Mr Mike Igini, the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner in Edo, on Wednesday disclosed that card readers for the Feb. 14 and Feb. 28 elections have been configured for all the 2,627 Polling Units in the state.
Igini disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) at Auchi, headquarters of the Etsako-West Local Government Area of the state.
“Edo State has 2,627 polling units and we have configured card readers to be used during the elections in all the 18 local government areas of the state.
“With the card readers in place, the entire process is now guaranteed,’’ he said.
Igini said that the configuration of the card readers for the polling units would restore power to the entire process.
“There is no way you can truncate the process because the security deployment for the entire polling units in the state is already completed.
“With the card readers, who do you want to fight with: there is no room for ballot box snatching or thumb printing because the card readers will give us an auditing of what may have transpired at every polling unit.
“If you snatch a card reader, for instance, there will be no result for that polling unit; if you snatch a ballot box, of course, how are you going to impute the total number of accredited persons in that polling unit?
“You cannot bypass the process. It is not something new. In other parts of the world, they have used it: the U.S. has used it, Ghana has used it and they have also used it in Kenya,’’ he said.
The Edo resident electoral commissioner called on the electorate to come out en masse to vote for their choice of candidates.
`All we want people to do is that on election day, having regards to the number of PVC s that have been distributed , which is well over a million in Edo State, is that everybody should come out to vote on that day.
“Because this election is not about those of us who will count the votes, it is an opportunity for the electorate to renew those who have been representing them.
“So it is an opportunity for them to exercise their votes and we must create that opportunity for them to be able to express themselves,’’ he added.
