19 candidates for Osun governorship election
No fewer than 19 political parties are fielding candidates for the August 9, 2014 governorship election in Osun State, the state’s Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) Mr. Olusegun Agbaje has said.
Agbaje disclosed this yesterday in Abuja at the “Nigeria civil society situation room dialogue with the Osun REC”, organized by the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC) with support from the UK Department for International Development (DFID).
He said one of the political parties the PDM withdrew from the race leaving only 19 candidates.
He said more than 742, 000 PVCs have so far been distributed out of a total of over 1.2 million PVCs adding that the INEC headquarters would still supply about 149,000 PVCs later in the month. He stressed that the Temporary Voters Card (TVC) shall not be used.
The REC debunked allegations by the All Progressives Congress (APC) that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was disenfranchising its members in the collection of PVCs ahead of the election.
His words “The issue of whether INEC is asking people which party they belong to does not hold water as the allegation is laughable, they should come forward with proof, because we know that our staff have been trained to be apolitical and if any person tries that, such a person is playing with his job.”
Agbaje said the commission has produced a very credible register of voters for the conduct of the Osun State governorship election saying the process led to the Automated Finger Print Identification System (AFIS) which is a method employed to rid the register of multiple registrations.
He said results from the AFIS revealed a total of 37,273 multiple records while valid registration after the AFIS phase 1 was 1,318,120 a reduction of 2.75 percent.
Agbaja stated
that
total number of registered voters in the state is 1,407,222.
“We have 310 polling units, Osun has the least number of double registration.
He explained that in Ekiti soldiers were deployed due to the threats on ground saying the threats are resonating in Osun.
On the issue of photochromic ballot papers, he said what the commission has done to forestall such allegation is to discard all the old inks and get new inks from the headquarters.
Earlier the Executive Director of PLAC, Clement Nwankwo stated that the dialogue was part of the efforts of the Civil Societies Organizations efforts to ensure a credible election in Osun State.