Ekiti State: Electoral Body Expresses Readiness For Saturday Polls

Nigeria’s electoral body, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC says it is fully ready for the conduct of the Presidential and National Assembly Elections holding on Saturday.

The Ekiti State office of the Commission confirmed that all election materials needed to ensure a smooth and hitch-free exercise had been received from the national headquarters and subsequently distributed to all the INEC offices in the sixteen local government areas of the state.

Ekiti INEC’s Head of Voter Education and Publicity, Temitope Akanmu, in an interview with Voice of Nigeria in Ado Ekiti, the state capital, explained that sensitive election materials, which used to arrive forty-eight hours before the election, were received much earlier this time around.

This, according to Akanmu, is an indication that the commission has really prepared to kick-start the process earlier on Saturday.

“The essence of this is that we want to have our polling units open earlier on the day of election,” he said.

Security

On security preparedness, Akanmu said the commission had from time to time, synergised with the security agencies through the Inter-agency Consultative Committee on Election Security, ICCES.

He says, “in fact, for the past two days except today, they have been having meeting on a daily basis and the feelers I got from their meeting is that they have been mapping strategize on how to ensure not INEC materials alone or Election officials alone are secured but that even the voters in the course of the elections will be protected.

“My discussions with them gave me an insight into their operations. They are trying to change the narrative from responsive security mechanism to a proactive security mechanism, that is, they don’t want to be reactive or reactionary. Their focus is to prevent the occurrence of crisis, rather than reacting when such happens.”

Akanmu noted that, beyond providing security on the day of election, the INEC in Ekiti State had used voter education mechanism to sensitise the people on the need to maintain peace, saying that a successful election will only happen in a peaceful environment.

He said that all measures had been put in place to ensure peaceful polls.

Akanmu urged the voters to go out on Saturday to cast their votes and elect people of their choice.

According to INEC record, Ekiti State has a total of 988,923 registered voters, out of which 734,746 persons have collected their Permanent Voters Card as at the last governorship election in the state in 2022.

Confidence Okwuchi