Nigeria Content Online

The Resident
Electoral Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission
in Oyo State, Ayo Adakeja, on Wednesday, ruled out the possibility of
displaying the of names of eligible voters in the state for a second
time.

Opposition parties,
particularly the Action Congress of Nigeria and Accord Party, have
called for a fresh display of the register to ascertain whether last
Saturday’s recovery of three Direct Data Capturing (DDC) machines of
the commission in an hotel in the state capital has affected the
integrity of the register.

A senior staff of
the commission and three members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
were, on Saturday, caught with the election materials.

Both the state’s
chapter of the ACN and Rashidi Ladoja, governorship candidate of the
Accord Party, have since called for fresh public display of the
register. They alleged that the incident showed the registers of 27
local governments out of the 33 in the state have been tampered with.

Olufemi Lanlehim,
the senatorial candidate of the ACN for Oyo Central, also condemned the
development, describing it as an attempt by the commission to
compromise the elections.

No breach in register

However, the
elections boss in the state, Mr. Adakeja, during a press briefing in
Ibadan yesterday, allayed the fears of the politicians, saying the
incident did not affect the register.

“On the issue of
tampering with voters’ register of 27 local government areas, I want to
state unequivocally that nothing of such happened,” he said.

“This allegation is
nothing but a figment of the imagination of the authors. Electronic
copies of the registration conducted here in Oyo State are already
deposited with the national headquarters of the commission. No name can
be added and none can be subtracted. We are not nursing fear of data
loss due to tampering. The officer involved in this unfortunate
incident is still with the police for necessary investigations.”

He, however,
assured that the commission will make the copies of the final register
available to political parties in Abuja before the elections, adding
that the party leaderships will make them available to states chapters.

He also spoke on the readiness of the commission for the polls.

“INEC is fully
prepared for the elections as it has already taken the delivery of some
of the materials to be used for the polls,” he said.

“Some of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) to be used as ad-hoc staff are currently undergoing training.”

Commenting on the
allegation that he had collected N20 million bribe from the state’s
governor, Adebayo Alao-Akala, to influence the election, the state INEC
boss, said ‘My clear response to this is the saying that comments are
free while facts are sacred”.

“The commission has
the mandate to conduct free, fair and credible elections,” he said. “We
are assuring the people of the state that it will do exactly that.”

The national
headquarters of INEC, on Tuesday seconded a director from Ibadan to
take over the ICT department of the state office following the arrest
of the INEC staff over the incident.