INEC national commissioner, Barrister Festus Okoye said this on Thursday night in a statement on the Twitter handle of the commission.
The Independent National
Electoral Commission said it will probe the cause of the fire that ravaged
about 5,141 Smart Card Readers loaded in a container at its office in Akure.
The fire began at about
7.30pm and was only limited to the container.
Okoye, who also witnessed
the fire, was in Ondo state in connection with preparations for the Ondo State
Governorship election scheduled for 10th October 2020.
He and other local staff of
the commission rushed to the office at about 8pm.
The Administrative
Secretary of the State, Mr. Popoola and some staff of the Commission were among
those who rushed to the office, as firemen battled to snuff off the fire..
According to Okoye,
“investigation into the cause of the fire will commence promptly after the fire
has been contained.
Okoye however said the fire
will not affect the scheduled governorship election.
He said card readers would
be mopped up from other states not conducting elections for the Ondo
governorship poll.
“The fire Service men are
still battling to put it out and we are confident that it would soon be put
out.
“This is just one state
election. What we are going to do is to mop up smart card readers from other
states and use them for the conduct of the election while investigating what
happened.
“The cost of 5,141 smart
card readers is so much, but we are not going to dwell on that now.
“What we are going to dwell
on is to mop up smart card readers from other states that are not conducting
elections and use them to conduct Ondo governorship election.
“We will dwell on other
issues regarding the configuration of the cards readers.”
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