INEC distributes 70 % PVCs in Ondo

AS of last Saturday when the presidential and national assembly elections were earlier scheduled to hold, 70.7 percent of the about 1.6 million registered voters in Ondo State have collected their Permanent Voters Cards (PVC).

   INEC Commissioner in charge of Ondo, Osun and Lagos States, Professor Akinola Salawu who disclosed this in Akure expressed the readiness of INEC to conduct free and fair elections in the country noting that all hands are on deck to deliver the freest elections in the history of the country

   The commissioner who in his words was “on a confirmation and evaluation visit to Ondo State to add value to preparations for the elections so that the exercise can be free, fair and credible” said the percentage of collection of PVC in the state was acceptable to the commission “even though we can still achieve more.”

   According to him, “in the last election in Ondo State, the percentage of collection in this state was maximum 70.2 percent and even then voter participation in the actual voting exercise was not up to half of the registered voters.”

     Salawu who addressed reporters at the INEC Akure Office at the commencement of the visit, said the commission was very much ready for the postponed polls which he said was shifted because of security considerations and not because of inadequate preparations on the part of the electoral body.

    He said, “INEC was ready. Officers, both adhoc and our own staff and others have been trained. We have got our ballot boxes ready with all the other documents while the sensitive materials were already deposited with the Central Bank. So we were ready.”

    Speaking on the innovative card reader technology to be deployed during the poll, Salawu, a professor of Nuclear Physics and two-term Vice-Chancellor of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso who got the INEC job only last January 7, said its usage would reduce possibility of rigging considerably.

     According to him, “the card reader is designed to check fraud in the polling exercise. I assure you that it will add value to our elections. Apart from confirming the identities of the holders, other important function of the card reader is that it prevents over-voting.

      “The reader will automatically stop when the number of voters exceeds the ones in the register and when there is controversy over this, the correct number will be retrieved and the excesses declared null and void. Aside this, the number of authenticated voters is sent to a central INEC server to discourage illegal additions. It is a good development for our elections.”

     When asked to respond to the fear in some quarters that the yet-untested technology may malfunction at the critical period of polling, Salami said “we have done the testing for the readers several times and it has proved to work effectively. So there is no cause for alarm.”