March 16, (THEWILL) – Ahead of Saturday’s State House of Assembly election in Bayelsa State, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has distributed sensitive materials to the eight (8) Local Government Areas that make up the 24 constituencies in the state.
The materials, which were distributed at the state branch of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), witnessed Party agents and other political actors, though journalists were not allowed into the premises to see the distribution process and no reason was given.
Speaking to journalists at the gate of the CBN, INEC Head of Voters Education and Publicity, Wilfred Ifogah, said they were at the CBN to retrieve the sensitive materials, which comprise result sheets and ballot papers for Bayelsa State House of Assembly constituency elections.
He said the local governments on land will get their materials on Thursday, while that of riverine Southern Ijaw and Brass Local Government Areas will be moved to INEC head office for onward movement on Friday morning to the Local Government Headquarters.
“We know, in Bayelsa, we are not having governorship election, so, right now, we are moving the materials to the various local government headquarters so that the distribution can be early enough on Saturday.
“We have 24 Constituencies in Bayelsa. Each of the local governments has 3 except southern ijaw, which has 4 and Kolokuma/ Opokuma with 2. Every necessary arrangement has been put in place. BVAS have been reconfigured for this particular election. So far so good, we are good to go,” he said.
Ifogah said, to make the system more smooth, refresher training for the Supervisor Presiding Officers has been organised, saying hopefully, that of Collation Officers will also take place.
“Just before today, we actually reviewed the election we had on the 25th and we look at some of the lapses and what actually caused them. As we speak today, we are trying to break the chain. That is why we are moving our materials early enough so that they can go to the various local government headquarters, especially those on land.
“The result sheet of the State Assembly election also has a seal on it, though the seal is different from that of the presidential election. This is to prevent people that want to be funny from possibly wanting to compromise having seen that of the presidential. We don’t play with that at all, so we design a different seal for this particular one,” he added.
One of the party agents, Comrade Martins Bago, who spoke with Journalists said they went inside and inspect the materials and from their findings, constituency 2 has 8 cartoons, constituency 1 has 11 cartoons while constituency 3 has 11 cartoons, totalling 30 cartoons.
“I want to believe that the materials are correct, we are moving them to Sagbama to separate them and send them to various wards to see how complete they are,” he said.
Also speaking, the State Chairman of New Nigerian People’s Party (NNPP), Comrade Joel Tubonimi, said the materials were already parked before they got there but that they insisted that all materials must be dropped for proper inspection to know whether they are correct before moving them out, which they actually inspected for confirmation.
He said they insisted because of what happened during the presidential election where some result sheets were missing. “So we insisted that we want to see everything and we were shown some of them. At Sagbama, our agents are also going to inspect the materials again to make sure nothing has happened in the course of transit.
“We hope that INEC will keep to their promise by giving us a free, fair and credible election on Saturday because we were not satisfied with the presidential election and others.”
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