AS residents of Ekiti State await the outcome of the Gubernatorial election which took place on Saturday, the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), has arrested two people in Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State capital following separate attempts to induce voters and cause violence.
Director, Public Relations at the Corps’ National Headquarters, DCC Olusola Odumosu disclosed this in a preliminary statement issued Saturday in Ado Ekiti.
“Two persons have been arrested in Ado Local Government; one in connection with vote buying while the other was arrested in connection with thuggery to disrupt voting at a polling unit”, he stated.
Although, the voting was largely peaceful, the new trend of vote buying called “See and Buy” where voters had to evolve ways of showing their thumb-printed ballots to party agents or chieftains nearly marred the exercise in some parts of the state.
The REC affirmed that he was impressed as NSCDC officials were deployed in real time to polling booths which opened early for accreditation and commended the Corps leadership for mobilizing large number of personnel to participate actively in the security training organized by INEC and identification of possible flashpoints for peculiar attention among other landmark duties.
The Ag. DCG operations, on his part assured that the Corps would continue to work closely with INEC and other sister agencies to ensure a hitch-free election process. Reiterating that the Corps is doing its best to secure INEC permanent and ad-hoc staff, electorates, election observers as well as sensitive and non sensitive election materials in the State.
The turnout for the election is impressive in most polling units we have visited and reports received from other Local Government Areas also revealed that voting is going on smoothly simultaneously; NSCDC is fully prepared to protect the people and Critical National Assets, our reserved personnel are on standby in case of any emergency and when the poll closes, our men on the ground would be deployed throughout the night, to ensure 24 hours security coverage of the state,” he said.
The Acting DCG operations called on residents to maintain orderly conduct after exercising their franchise and refrain from violence when the votes are counted as the Corps had deployed intelligence officers to possible flash points for effective intelligence gathering and management of security situation.
