INEC Chairman Mahmood Yakubu
By Baron Ike
Contrary to expectations, the Ekiti state governorship election of Saturday started on a peaceful note with the electorate turning out in large numbers to vote.
Voting processes started in all the 16 local government areas at 8am as the Independent National Electoral Commission made sure voting materials and the INEC officials were in place in record time.
With the exception of one polling booth where INEC election materials were destroyed no other serious incident during accreditation and voting was reported. INEC has however promised to investigate the cause of the fracas.
All Progressive Congress candidate, Kayode Fayemi and the People’s Democratic Party candidate, Oladapo Olusola-Eleka had no problem with their accreditation.
But Fayemi’s wife was not so lucky as the card reader could not pick her name.
The candidates were impressed with the turn out of voters and expect that the process will be concluded the way it started.
Civil society organisations and other election monitors were full of commendation for the INEC, the police and Ekiti electorate for disproving bookmakers who predicted chaos.
They however said an improvement will be needed in areas if card readers, military exclusion from election monitoring and the use of money to induce voters even at the polling booths by politicians.
Clement Nwankwo and Ezenwa Nwagwu spoke glowingly about the peaceful beggining of the voting process and suggested that the collation and announcement of the result should be made transparent.
They insist that civil society organisations and the media should be made to have assess to the callation centres as a way of underscoring the credibility of the whole process.
The INEC Electoral Commissioner for the Ekiti election said he was optimistic the commission wiuld do a credible job.
Voting ended in virtually all the 177 polling centres across the state.
Counting is also in progress with the results being collated in some places by 3.30 pm.