THE governorship election in Ekiti State though has been adjudged peaceful, the Resident Electoral Commissioner in the state Prof. Abdulganiy Raji, on Saturday, confirmed the disruption in some areas of the state.
Raji, who addressed journalists at the state headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission in Ado-Ekiti, said nearly all polling units in the state began accreditation and voting at the official time of 8am, and those that were not able to start by 8am commenced accreditation almost 15 minutes after 8am.
The ICIR however observed that some wards in Ado -Ekiti West did not commence until after 9am because the card readers failed to work, until a replace was found which takes an hour or thereabout.
The REC said the delay was mainly caused by disorderliness of voters as INEC staffers reported promptly at polling with electoral materials.
“I can say our record of starting by 8am is 100 per cent and voting has been going on smoothly. I have always been very confident that our machines would not fail. However, every time I say this, I tell people it is a machine.
“We have had cases of about two or three of our machines malfunctioning, but they were replaced within a very short period.
The technical officers also came to the aid of the polling officers to correct anomaly. However, we have heard of one or two polling units where they had disrupted elections; one in the Gbonyin council area of the state.
“That is the one where we have got very full information. We have heard of some little issues in one or two other places, which I cannot give information on now. I’ve seen the picture of that of Gbonyin where they threw away our ballot box and then the content was spilled on the ground.”
Raji scored INEC high, and pledged that problem areas will be addressed in the future election.
“For most of these places where we have these card readers not functioning or the fingerprints not recognised, we are going to use the system that we have adopted, and that is to allow the person to vote, having checked the record on our master list and then matched the (voter’s) face with their picture and that is what we have been doing,” he said.
Ajibola Amzat, Managing Editor at The ICIR. He can be reached via [email protected]
and @ajibolaamzat on Twitter.