Voting is still ongoing in Akwa-Ibom state, Southern Nigeria.
Governor Udom Emmanuel who voted, expressed his delight over the peaceful conduct of the election.
The governor arrived his polling unit at Awa ward 1, Onna local government at 10:30 am local time where he voted.
Speaking to Journalists after casting his votes he said the security measures put in place yielded results as the election was peaceful and cases of violence were not reported.
“We put everything in place, all the security apparatus we have, so we sat more than once to do a security mapping, do adequate planning and put up a tactical plan to also cope with emergencies and today I think it’s working well because I get briefed every 30 minutes.”
Speaking on the malfunctioning of the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System BVAS as reported in some local governments, the governor indicated that there were a few cases reported in the state and it was due to human error in cases where the officials forgot the password of the BVAS.
According to him, this technology is novel and it will take time to get used to it.
“There are some units and there are some wards who are complaining that the BVAS is not functioning well but there is one they just complained and I just discovered that probably the person missed the password.
“There is a local government they called me that two wards could not vote, by the time we checked we discovered that the people that that were sent there forgot the password so a lot of this complains we need to really really check and find out whose is fault.”
The governor added that INEC shouldn’t take total blame of the malfunctioning of the BVAS, however, they should have exposed the staff to this technology because they recruited and trained them.
Governor Udom made an appeal to INEC to extend the time of voting, mostly to centres that experienced issues with the BVAS in order to give people enough time to vote. He also called on people who are at the centres not to leave because when they are at the unit they would be attended to.
The governor advised the citizens to maintain peace in the state during and after election and also expressed his hope to have a president that will love Nigeria the way he does as this is capable of bringing change and transformation in the country within 2 years.
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