The Independence National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Cross River State has commenced the distribution of sensitive and none-sensitive materials for this Saturday’s governorship and house of assembly elections to various local government areas of the state.
Disclosing this at a stakeholder’s meeting on Monday, the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Dr Frankland Briyal, said although the INEC had some shortages, it would be made up today or tomorrow by INEC Abuja.
“In readiness for Saturday, March 9th Governorship and House of Assembly Elections, we have received sensitive materials up to 95%, various stake holders who are responsible for the conduct of the elections were at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) with us to sort the materials out on Sunday for on ward delivery to the local government areas and polling units.
“The short fall experienced would be send to us between today and tomorrow. But for none-sensitive materials, we have no problems,” he said.
Speaking on February 23rd Presidential and National Assembly elections, the INEC REC said, “Cross River State was ranked among the state that performed creditably well in the country.
“Based on this, the State has no re-run and supplementary elections. All our elections were concluded and winners announced”, but he regretted that the state had one or two security problems.
“However, we had one or two security problems, our electoral officers who came back from Obudu to Calabar were attacked and shot at, but nothing happened to them and other groups were shot at Ikom by suspected armed robbers but nobody was hurt and there was no fatality in all that we experienced.”
He explained that INEC came up with some guidelines which most of the people who came for elections two weeks ago didn’t understand; it’s all about smart card readers.
“Smart card readers have become part of the elections in this country, any group of people or community or polling units or areas or wards that will deliberately disallow the use of smart card readers would be scored zero.
“If you try to hijack the materials, ballot papers, results sheet at any point, you took it to your house or specified place to thump prints and bring it back, such results would not be accepted because the smart card readers read and also transmit.
“Some local government areas in some wards and some polling units had zero score because they deliberately refused to use the smart card readers, no matter the number of score, it going to be recorded as zero, Violence during elections doesn’t pay, it makes you score zero.”
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