By Yomi Kareem
Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, Chairman Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has assured the people of Ekiti state that their votes will count in choosing their leader in the governorship election slated for 18th of June 2022.
The INEC Chairman stated this yesterday in Ado Ekiti, Ekiti state capital, during an interface with the State Council of Traditional Rulers ahead of the governorship election in the state.
He gave the assurance that every vote will count during the exercise and that the commission will stand by the obligatory mission of ensuring that no extraneous interferences are allowed to affect the credibility of the poll adversely while he described monetized politics as inimical for election and anti-democratic.
Addressing the monarchs, Yakubu said a total of 989,202 voters had been registered in Ekiti by INEC, out of which over 740,000 had procured their Permanent Voter Cards, PVCs, in readiness for the poll.
The INEC boss revealed that the commission will conduct the governorship poll alongside the botched Ekiti State Assembly bye-election in Ekiti East Constituency 1.
“I want to appeal to all voters in Ekiti that their votes will count. We would still return to interact with other critical stakeholders on how to have a peaceful election in Ekiti. The atmosphere now for the conduct of the 2022 election is so calm, unlike what we had in 2018.
“I asked myself what has changed, I was told the royal fathers had been working hard to ensure that the situation is calm and I could see it is really very calm.
“In this election, there will be two ballot boxes in Ekiti East constituency 1, because they will elect their assembly representative together with the governor. There will be 16 political parties for the governorship election, but only two for the bye-election in Ekiti East,” Yakubu said.
The INEC boss added that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, invention had faced out the use of rigging-pruned Incidence Forms and the malfunctioning Smart Card readers, for the conduct of elections.
