Sensitive materials for Saturday’s presidential and national assembly elections have started arriving offices of the 33 local government areas of Oyo State.
This followed the commencement of distribution of the materials from the Central Bank of Nigeria, Ibadan, on Thursday.
The materials distributed in the presence of representatives of political parties, security agents, other election stakeholders were ballot papers, result sheets, EC8 forms, Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines.
Both at the Central Bank of Nigeria and at the state office of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), in Ibadan, Nigerian Tribune observed the materials being sorted per local government and loaded into buses with security personnel accompanying each bus leaving.
Speaking on the distribution, the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in the state, Dr Adeniran Tella, said the INEC would make use of existing Registration Area Centres (RACs) across the LGAs in the state to fast-track the process of distributing the sensitive materials to the polling units in the state.
He noted that the RACs would be activated on Friday. Tella added that security agents were providing security as the materials are being moved to the various local government areas across the state.
Speaking further, Tella stressed that the commission is committed to an improved electoral process with the injection of modern technology from the process of accreditation to the uploading of results.
State Secretary, All Progressives Congress (APC), Oyo state, Mr Tajudeen Olanite, who witnessed the distribution, expressed satisfaction at the level of preparedness, transparency shown by INEC for the election, thus far.
Similarly, Dr Nureni Adeniran, the Chief Collating Agent, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Oyo state, said the innovations adopted by INEC and existence of the Electoral Law 2022 would engender a more credible, free, fair and inclusive election.
