We Are Ready For Ondo Gubernatorial Election – INEC
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Friday said it is ready to conduct a credible, transparent, free and fair governorship election in Ondo State on Saturday (today).
The National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education, INEC, Festus Okoye, in an interview with Insidebusiness.ng, said if the commission will not surpass the feat it accomplished in the September 19 Edo State governorship election, it will not go below it.
He stated that the commission had analysed the problems it encountered during the Edo State governorship election and had mapped out strategies to address them.
He also reiterated the commitment of INEC to deploy Z-pad to upload election results from the units to its central portal.
About 17 political parties are on the INEC ballot paper for the election although the All Progressives Congress (APC), the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and the Zenith Labour Party (ZLP) are the leading political parties.
The incumbent governor, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu is the APC candidate; Eyitayo Jegede is the PDP flag bearer while Agboola Ajayi is the candidate of the ZLP as well as Akeredolu’s deputy.
Okoye said, “We are ready for the election. Our desire and our hope is that if we can not do better than Edo, we are not going to lower the bar. Some of the challenges we had with the Edo governorship election, we have harvested all of them and we have tried as much as possible to either plug the loopholes or to put in mechanisms that will enable us to conduct a good election.
“We are going to use Z-Pad to upload the polling unit results into our central result portal. The Z-pad will be deployed. With the Edo governorship election, over 66,000 Nigerians registered in that particular portal and we expect that by the time we are through with the Ondo governorship election, over 100,000 Nigerians would have registered in that particular format. So it is going to be a central part of our electoral process and it is going to guarantee some level of transparency and accountability in the result collation process.”
He stated that he committed in collaboration with security agencies have made adequate security arrangements for the safety of electoral personnel and materials as well as voters.
He added that the Nigerian Navy and the Marine Police would make available their gunboats to escort INEC personnel and materials in high seas.
According to him, the commission has assessed the topography of the state and made arrangements to prevent hitches.
He also said the police and other security agencies are ready to provide security during the exercise.
He urged the governorship candidates to respect the Peace Accord they signed and ensure that there will be no violence during the election.
Okoye said, “We have done a lot in terms of aligning our processes and procedure with that of security agencies that have the responsibilities for protecting both our personnel and materials as well as the voters.
“The leadership of the Police Force are deploying over 33,000 personnel for the purposes of this election. Other services are also providing over 3,500 of their personnel to complement the Nigerian Police Force which is the real agency on election security.
“We have also had a very robust discussion with the Nigerian Navy and the Marine police, who are going to make available their critical access and platform in terms of gunboats to escort our materials in high sea, especially in the riverine areas because we have 170 polling units in these riverine areas and our material and our personnel must be safe to conduct an election in these areas.
“They have also assured us that they have conducted clearance operations especially in the creeks in those riverine areas and other agencies have been carrying out a show of force.”
“Beyond that, we expect that the political parties will abide by the spirit of the Peace Accord which they signed on Tuesday because it is supposed to be their covenant with the people that they are going to respect and rein in their supporters and they are not going to do anything that will jeopardise the peaceful conduct of the election.
“We have confidence that the security agencies are going to take control of the situation to make sure that nobody violates the environment for the peaceful conduct of this election.”
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