Ogun INEC Is Ready For The Elections – REC

 

                RESIDENT Electoral Commissioner in Ogun State, Chief Timothy Ibitoye has said that the commission is ready to conduct the coming elections.
Ibitoye said, the commission had prepared for the election before it was shifted to March 28 and April 11,2015 .
The REC while fielding questions on the level of preparedness of the commission for the coming elections, said everything needed to be put in place had been put in place for the free and fair elections.
When asked if he has any fear over the coming elections,  Ibitoye said, “I do not have any fear because all the materials for the elections are in my custody.

“ I have distributed them to all the 20 local government areas of the state.  My fear before,  was the issue of PVCs , glory be to God that we have resolved the challenges .

Ogun REC, Chief Timothy Ibitoye

“As I am talking to you now, head of the unit of ICT in Ogun state is in Abuja and I have told her not to come back to the state until the remaining PVCs are ready and she has to follow it”.
The  Commission had recently  discovered 555 Permanent Voter Cards belonging to dead people between 2011and 2015 in the state. The commission had said it had  set aside the PVCs , saying, investigation was still on-going with a view  to knowing  the actual  figure of the people who had registered  during the exercise , but had died .
Corroborating the level of preparedness of the commission in the state,  Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC)    National Commissioner in Charge of Oyo, Ogun and Ekiti states, Prof. Lai Olurode said collection of PVC  in the  State has witnessed tremendous improvement , saying the PVCs  collection has hit 59 percent in the state.
Prof. Olurode who was in Abeokuta,  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.
According to him, Ogun state seems to be on the spot because it is the state that has achieved the least and we are not trying to justify , it just happened.
“Here is an update of what we have been able to do. Between 10th and 15th we have received over 71, 605 PVCs, the percentage was over 40 but we have passed that and now we have reached almost 60% in Ogun state and. About cards that have been received, We have 65% and we are confident that before the elections we would distributed over 70% -75%.
“ The total number of voters in Ogun state is 1,795,794. As at yesterday march 17, the total number of PVCs received from Abuja is 1,642,607. “The commission in Ogun state as at yesterday have distributed a total of 1,053,230 PVCs. In effect we have a total of 589, 377 cards yet to be collected.  This is close to 40 percent, but we are more concerned about the number of cards yet to be collected  than those that are yet to be printed.
“The total number of PVCs expected from Abuja is 153, 185, yet to be printed and collected in Ogun state . In summary, based on the percentage of PVCs so far collected from Abuja, we have achieved 64.1% issuance rate. Based on the total registered voters we have achieved 59% collection rate. “While there are 153,185 PVCs yet to arrive from Abuja, we are worried that about the failure of 589,377 PVCs awaiting collection.
Uncollected cards
The effort to get validly registered voters to collect their PVCs should not be left solely for the Commission. Political parties, candidates , religious and community leaders as well as Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) among others should join us in this drive.
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.
Meanwhile, attempt to get Police detachment that would monitor the elections from the Police Public Relations, Muyiwa Adejobi was unsuccessful.
When contacted on the detachment of Police that would monitor the election ,Adejobi  said the command would soon address newsmen on the issue.
He however pledged to keep the Vanguard posted when the command was ready to disclose the number of the detachment.