With 116 days to the Osun Governorship election, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC says from Wednesday, 30th March 2022, the continuous voters exercise will take place in each of the 332 wards across the States.
The Resident Electoral Commissioner in Osun State, Professor Abdulganiy Raji announced this during a stakeholders meeting on devolution of Continuous Voters Registration at the INEC State Headquarters, Osogbo.
Professor Raji explained that the devolution was aimed at ensuring that all eligible voters who had not and could not perfom their civic duty of registering as voters due to distance were provided opportunity to do so with ease.
He said to hasten the process, INEC was mobilising 400 data capturing machines across the 332 registration centres in Osun State for the period of the exercise as against the 72 machines which were deployed, while the registration was restricted to local government offices only.
The Osun Resident Electoral Commissioner lamented that one third of those who registered online had refused to complete the process.
Professor Raji appealed to the stakeholders which include political parties, religious leaders, traditional rulers, civil society organisations and critical groups to assist the commission in mobilising the people for the voters registration.
He said the new INEC machine that would be deployed for the Governorship Election in July would recognise the owners of voters card, notwithstanding the length of period the card was issued.
In a lecture, a Director from the INEC ICT department in Abuja, Mr Sunny Ezumeh described voter education as imminent to a successful Democratic transition in Nigeria.
Also speaking, a traditional ruler, the Timi of Ede, Oba Munirudeen Adesola , who was represented by Agbaakin of Ede, Chief Adewale Salau pledged that traditional rulers in the state had accepted the mandate of political education to awaken the people, not just to register but to collect their voters card.
He expressed the confidence that INEC would play it’s role of ensuring the success of the state Governorship election as a signpost to the 2023 general election.
Prominent religious leaders including the Bishop of Methodist Church, Osogbo Most Reverend Amos Ogunrinde and the President of the Osun Muslim community Alhaji Mustapha Olawuyi appealed to politicians to allow the process to run its course by accepting the verdict of the people as given during the poll.
Representatives of political parties on the occasion also gave assurances of their resolve to allow the election runs it’s course, urging INEC and Security agencies to be fair in treating all parties.
Adenitan Akinola
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