Cross River bye-elections: INEC deploys 3 RECs, sensitive materials to councils
[From ANIEKAN ANIEKAN, Calabar]
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has deployed three Resident Electoral Commissioners to oversee the conduct of the bye Elections in Cross River State scheduled for February 26.
The commissioners are redeployed from Oyo, Enugu and Edi States and will supervise one local government area each.
The affected areas include, Ogoja/Yala Federal Constituency seat and the Akpabuyo State Constituency.
National Commissioner of INEC, Mr Festus Okoye disclosed this at the Central Bank Of Calabar during the movement of sensitive materials to the affected local government areas.
Okoye stated that as at Thursday, February 24, political parties and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) inspected the electoral materials deposited with the CBN and confirmed their authenticity.
“Each of the resident commissioners will supervise one of the LGA and they are signing the result sheet for their specific LGA, this is because we want to guarantee the integrity of the result sheets.
“We are going to make sure that we monitor the movement of our result sheets from the polling units up to the registration areas and the LGA levels.
“We have no fears as we have done due diligence in the process and have trained the necessary manpower needed for the election.
“The security agencies are here to escort the materials, to the various venues for the by-elections and political parties, CSOs are free to follow these materials to the last destination, he said.
Okoye said for Saturday’ bye-elections, only people whose names were on the voter register during the 2019 general election would vote.
He explained that new registrants will not vote because they were yet to print Permanent Voter Card (PVC) for new registrants.
He also disclosed that the use of incident forms has been banned by INEC as they now use the Bi Modal Voter Accreditation System (BIVAS) that is customised to each polling unit in the by-elections.
Venatius Ikem, the Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Cross River, as well as, Bassey Mensah, Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state, expressed confidence in the exercise thus far.
