ELECTORAL COMMISSION BEGINS TRANSPORTAION OF ELECTORAL MATERIALS IN OGUN

The Resident Electoral Commissioner in an interview with journalists, affirmed that minimum of ten policemen were attached with each vehicle transporting the materials to their various locations across the local government areas,just as he added that the use of card readers remained a must at the poll

‘There is issue with that, we will tell the technical officers to confirm that there is issue of verification, if you are not able to fix that card reader by 2pm, we are going to suspend that election and continue the following day with a better smart card reader’,

‘So people should not take law into their hands by forcing polling officials to proceed that they use manual voting, where polling officials are forced to use manual voting, we are going to cancel that election and we will record zero vote for that polling unit, and there is not going to be a rerun. It must be reported to us that verification is not being done’,he added.

Penpushing further reports that, Raji , explained that, ’but where  electric accreditation is failing? That is the  third stage of verification on the card reader, we can result to manual voting, which means the card of that voter has been recognised and that voter is seen as a potential voter in that polling unit’,

He added, ’meaning that the card reader has recorded him as a voter but it is only  fingerprint that is not recognised, then we will now go back to our register and assume that the voter is a registered person with us then he will now be requested to thumbprint on our register in lieu of the one that is not recognised by the card’.

‘That is when manual voting can be done, but by that the card reader had recognised that voter but it is only the biometric that is failing, but where a voter is not recognised, manual voting cannot be done. It matters time all our materials got to the polling units’.

‘ I have just mentioned it, it just because people are not patient enough, please give us time, we have 3,213 registration area, technicians deployed to attend to issues at polling units, so please wait for them, we don’t know minutes they will appear where a smart card reader is not functioning, but he will come and put it right’.

‘ So we have provided motorcycles for them to make movement easy even in difficult terrains, so please let us exercise patience because every voter must pass through the smart card reader, where it is not used it is zero vote, that is where they are forced not to use the smart card reader’.

‘I have been appealing on the media that electorate if there is going to be easy, it is the electorates that will make it easy. We have provided enough security, you see election is a civil process, at each of the polling units, we have provided a minimum of three security agents, who will not be armed because elections is a civil process’.

‘We have armed security agents who are located to some strategic places in case those who are at the polling units go beyond what they can handle, then we don’t want them to come out, there are soldiers also in strategic places, we also don’t want them to come out, except when electorates say come out before they will come out, we want elections to be a civil process, let us all conduct ourselves peacefully and that is just our appeal’ he stated.