Peaceful poll in Oyo

The first round of the general election in Oyo State took off on a peaceful and orderly note yesterday with fairly impressive voters’ turnout at many polling stations. There was also noticeable improvement in punctuality and deployment of electoral officials and materials, unlike what was witnessed in the botched exercise on April 2.

But there were pockets of complaints of late arrival of INEC officials, illegal balloting and the absence of ballot papers in some polling booths across Ibadan, the state capital.

Also, three persons caught with arms and ammunition were arrested at American Quarters, Agodi in Ibadan North East Local Government while the election was on, but Sunday Sun could not confirm the arrest from the state’s Police Command.

However, security was tight around the entire state, with motorized patrol by soldiers, policemen and State Security Services (SSS) operatives, security agents also manned strategic locations, conducting searches on motorists and pedestrians on major roads.
In apparent compliance with the advise to protect their votes, some voters’, mostly youths of the Neighbourhood Vigilance group, stopping and checking vehicles for ballot snatchers. 

At the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) office at Agodi, vehicles were barred from entering the premises, which swarmed with men of the Anti-bomb Disposal Unit of the police.

Many polling booths initially recorded low turnout between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. when the exercise began, as scepticism kept many people away. But the queue of voters’ lengthened drastically as the day wore on.
There were no major incidents of violence as accreditation and voting went peacefully and orderly.
Reports from Oke-Ogun, Oyo, Ibarapa and Ogbomosho, where the Governor, Otunba Adebayo Alao-Akala, and his wife, Kemi, voted at exactly 12:08 p.m. at his ward in Ogbomosho North Local Government, indicated similar calm in those places.

Accreditation and voting commenced on time in many places, but hundreds of voters in units 12 and 13 of ward 11, Ibadan South East Local Government, held INEC officials in charge of the polling booths hostage for over three hours for failing to produce ballot papers after accrediting them.

One of their spokesmen, Sunday Ajayi, told Sunday Sun: “We started accreditation at 8 a.m. and stopped by 12:05 p.m. But they (officials) didn’t bring ballot papers for us to vote. None of us here has voted. And if we allow them to go with the ballot boxes now, they will go and fill it with ballot papers and rig the election. They were supposed to come with all the materials”

 -Sun

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Posted by admin on Apr 9 2011. Filed under Elections 2011, NNP Elections 2011 Updates, Oyo, State News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry