The national Commissioner of Independent National Electoral
Commission in charge of Oyo, Ogun and Ekiti states, Prof. Lai Olurode, has said
politicians who have either cloned or bought up the Permanent Voter Cards from
registered voters will be disappointed during the forthcoming elections.
Olurode said this yesterday, at the INEC headquarters in
Abeokuta while briefing journalists on the preparedness of the commission.
The INEC commissioner who allayed the fears of the
electorate over the usage of card readers during the coming elections,
said the commission introduced the machines with a view to checking
counterfeiting and impersonation during the elections.
According to him, we know some people are cloning and mopping up
PVCs , we want to assure them that they will be disappointed.
“What we want to do is to screen out illegal cards because a lot
of people are cloning, purchasing and selling of the Permanent Voter Cards but
it is a waste of time. That is why we need the media presence in this election,
the vigilance group. This election requires a lot of human monitoring because
it is different from the previous elections, people must be present, parties
must educate their people and their agents”, he said .
While speaking on the level of INEC preparedness in the three
states, Prof. Olurode claimed that all the materials for the elections
had been on ground even before the earlier scheduled date for the Presidential
and national assembly elections.
He however, said PVCs collection in Ogun State has
witnessed tremendous improvement , saying,it’s collection has hit 59
percent in the state.
Prof. Olurode revealed that currently there are 589, 377 PVCs
that are yet to be collected, while a total of 1,053,230 cards have been
distributed in the state.
Apologising for the slow pace of distribution of PVC in the
state, the national commissioner stated that it was not deliberately
caused by the commission.
He, declared that some registered voters may be disenfranchised
as he explained that all the outstanding PVCs might not be ready before the
elections.
He noted that the Commission is facing challenges with the
printing of the cards.
Dismissing the claim of Ogun State government that the remaining
uncollected cards were alien cards, Prof. Olurode explained that besides the
fact that some owners of the cards had died, he cited the issue of Redeemer’s
University which has relocated to Ede, Osun State after the 2011 registration
exercise.
He explained that some of the students registered in Ogun State
as well as some students of other higher institutions in the state who had
graduated.
The national commissioner revealed that the commission randomly
called owners of some of the cards only to discover that they had
resident in the state while some had died.
Meanwhile, Prof. Olurode declared the technologies being
introduced by the commission into the electoral process was meant to reduce if
not outright wipe out electoral malpractices with a view to have a free, fair
and acceptable elections in the country.
He explained that some categories of people would not be allowed
to vote in spite of flaunting a PVC at the polling booth. He listed them as
people with fake PVC, people with another person’s original PVC and people who
are underaged.
However, the national commissioner explained that there would be
three categories of sorting on the election days, saying the ballot box for
presidential position which would be in red colour would sorted to see whether
any voter had mistakenly dropped the another ballot paper in it.
This would be followed by the black ballot box for the Senate
and blue for the House of Representatives.
Thereafter, sorting according to parties would follow and
counting and recording of the votes cast.
Nevertheless, Prof. Olurode charged the electorate and parties
agents to be vigilant because all the technology transformations were not
all-problem-solving.
The commission’s Resident Electoral Commission, Chief Timothy
Ibitoye declared that there were no fears in the state regarding the coming
elections.
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