INEC won’t use card readers for Ekiti/Osun polls’

The Resident Electoral Commissioner   in Osun State, Ambassador Rufus Akeju, has said that the Independent National Electoral Commission will not use electronic card reader for the Ekiti and Osun governorship elections because of the law banning electronic voting.

The REC said this on Wednesday at a round-table organised by the Department of Political Science and Industrial Relations of the Fountain University, Osogbo.

The Osun REC, who was represented by the Head of Department, Electoral Operations, Mr. Azeez Olatunji, said that INEC would wait until February general election by the time the legal restraint would have been vacated to use the card readers.

He said, “ We in the INEC know that card reader is desirable but there is a law banning anything electronic. If we use card readers some people may go to court and they will win because the card readers are electronic devices.

“ The legal constraint that will make us to use the card readers has not been discharged. We will use the card readers in February 2015 elections and by that time we hope that the ban on it would have been discharged.”

He explained that the use of permanent voter’s cards for the elections in the two states would prevent people who did not register from voting.

Explaining why elections are manipulated, the   REC’s representative said the direction given by the policy makers at the helms of affairs of the electoral body always determine the fairness or otherwise of elections in the country.