ABUJA – The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Thursday said it had put in place all the required processes and procedures for the successful conduct of the Saturday’s governorship election in Edo.
INEC National Commissioner and Chairman of Information and Voter Education Committee, appearing on the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Forum on Thursday in Abuja, said INEC was fully ready for the election.
Okoye said that all the non-sensitive materials for Edo state election were already delivered and batched to registration areas since August.
“The sensitive materials, that is, the result sheets and ballot papers arrived Edo state on Monday.
“Yesterday (Wednesday), there was a meeting with the various political parties relating to the modus operandi of inspection.
“The materials have left the Central Bank of Nigeria today (Sept. 17) for the various local governments and these materials are batched in accordance with the registration areas.
“We have 192 registration areas in Edo State or what you normally call wards.
“So, these materials are batched in accordance with the wards and the ballot papers and their results sheets are colour coded to the various local governments.’’
Okoye said that the commission had also put in place mechanism to address the challenge of transportation leading to delay in deployment of election materials on election day.
He explained that since INEC did not have enough vehicles to serve on election day, it usually did hire vehicles from the National Union of Road Transport Workers, and the Transport Owners Association and profile them.
Okoye, however, said after paying 50 per cent of the contract fees, some of them would not be available on election day.
“What we have done is to move some of our Hilux vehicles from the contiguous states that do not have elections, so that we can use them as an intervention mechanism during the election.
“Secondly, we there are a few of the local governments in Edo state that are riverine.
“So, we are in contact with the marine Police and with the Navy, who are going to provide gunship to protect some of our staff members that are going to be working in some of these areas.
“We are working assiduously to make sure that we do not have this type of challenge in terms of distribution of materials on election day.’’
Okoye added that the commission had concluded training of all electoral officers, while the training for collation for wards, local governments and state retuning officer, normally left for about two days to the election day was ongoing.
He, however, said that no collation officer was going to come from any of the tertiary institutions in Edo state, but from out of the state.
“So in relation to this particular election, this commission is ready.
“We have put in place all the processes and procedures required for the conduct of this election.
“As you are aware, we posted five Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs), to support the REC of Edo. We also posted three national commissioners to go and support the process. So we are already.’’
