By: Ishola Michael – Bauchi
Bauchi State office of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Wednesday commenced the distribution of sensitive materials to its offices in the 20 LGAs of the State.
The exercise is in preparation ahead of the Saturday, 18th March gubernatorial and state assembly elections
The Commission also assured the residents of the state of timely distributions of all materials and items needed for the conduct of the elections across all the 20 LGAs headquarters where INEC offices are sited before Saturday’s elections.
Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Alh Mohammed B. Nura gave the assurance during the distributions of the sensitive materials at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), in Bauchi saying that “today, we are here to distribute the sensitive materials in the custody of the CBN to the various 20 LGAs across the State.”
He also noted that last time the Commission had distributed the items on Thursday and they reached the local government headquarters on the same day, where they had Friday and Saturday morning to escalate to the polling units.
According to the REC, the main reason for this early commencement of the distributions exercise of the materials was to have enough time to see if there is any shortfall in the items in the boxes and for the officials to know how they can report to the headquarters for early replacement of the remaining shortfall items before the Saturday’s exercise.
He explained that the other time the items were distributed at the INEC office, but this time the Commission decided to do the exercise at CBN because the quantity of the items is not much like that of the Presidential elections.
Some of the stakeholders comprising of party agents, securities, as well as elections observers during the distributions of the items, expressed satisfaction and confidence with the overall process.
Our correspondent learnt that items distributed included Form EC 8B (1) and Ballot Papers for the governorship and state assembly elections in the State.
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