INEC COMMENCES DISTRIBUTION OF SENSITIVE MATERIALS IN EBONYI STATE
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Ebonyi State has commenced the distribution of sensitive items for the rescheduled General Election slated for Saturday this week.
The Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in the State, Professor Godswill Obioma, announced this when he led some journalists to inspect the distribution of the materials at Abakaliki Branch of Central Bank of Nigeria.
The sensitive items include 3,288 (three thousand two hundred and eighty-eight) reconfigured Smart Card Reader Machines, ballot papers and other vital document.
Professor Obioma explained that INEC installed tracking devices in all the vehicles conveying the materials to the Local Government Areas and would be escorted by heavily armed policemen.
He emphasised that the Commission was upbeat in meeting the timeline for seven focal areas guiding its preparation for the election, including arranging all the materials polling unit by polling unit as well as activation of registration area camps by Friday.
“We are moving sensitive materials down to the Local Government batching by batching according to polling units and voting points Wednesday and Thursday and non sensitive materials we had earlier moved to the local government, we are batching them ward by ward,” Professor Obioma stated.
An agent of the All Progressives Congress (APC) monitoring the distribution, Chief Edwin Okeh, described the preparation as the best and urged the Commission not to relent in ensuring that the polls were credible.
Chief Okeh said “the preparation is the best so far because INEC has done what it suppose to do, I’m impressed and am not suspecting any foul play at all.”
His Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) counterpart, Chief Ali Odefa, said the distribution was transparent as all sensitive materials released for distribution from the vault of CBN were not tampered with.
According to Ali Odef, “the management of INEC in Ebonyi State has really shown commitment and sincerity in the conduct of this Election, as a matter of fact before any crate is open they normally insist that all agents of political party must be present, intact am really impressed.”
Radio Nigeria observed that INEC in the State had activated a digital situation room at its Headquarters in Abakaliki from where movement of materials in real time would be monitored.
` AMECHI ODO