The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said it has devised means of rendering useless the use of hoodlums to disrupt elections while results are not in favour of a particular candidate or political party.
The commission also maintained that any hoodlum or thug who intends to disrupt elections will have himself to blame. These disclosures were made by Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Oyo State, Mutiu Agboke, while addressing journalists at the commission’s office in Ibadan during a valedictory programme/media briefing held in his honour to mark the end of his tenure.
He added that INEC has created 1,607 additional polling units in the state while 753,044 cards are yet to be collected by the electorate.
Agboke also hinted that card readers and incident form have been replaced with Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) for the purpose of accreditation, verification and uploading of results from polling units.
It would be recalled that Agboke, who was posted to Oyo State as REC in 2018 will end his five-year tenure as REC today, Wednesday, July 6.
The outgoing REC while speaking said that any election conducted in a polling unit and disrupted by hoodlums or thugs will be cancelled by the commission.
He maintained that gone are the days when hoodlums or thugs will disrupt elections and go away with it.
While speaking on the preparation of the commission ahead of the 2023 elections, Agboke explained that INEC has deployed all available means to curb electoral malpractices. He added that the commission is passionate to conduct free, fair and transparent elections in 2023.
According to him, “Hoodlums and thugs have no business at the polling units. Because, if they disrupt the election in a polling unit, that election will be cancelled by the INEC. “And now, the election result in a polling unit will be unloaded on the INEC website.
The commission has retired the Smart Card Reader and introduced Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the purposes of voter accreditation, verification and uploading of results from the polling units.
So, if we conduct an election in a place and the hoodlums hijacked it, that will not affect the sanctity of the election because the result has been uploaded on the INEC website.
“Even before we get to the collation centre, the election result is already on the website. “So, hoodlums or thugs who want to disrupt the election are wasting their time”.
