Fuel price hike won’t affect Edo poll

The Independent National Electoral Commission has said the recent hike in the price of petrol will not affect the conduct of the Edo governorship election.

Rotimi Oyekanmi, Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, said this while fielding questions from newsmen during the pre-election news conference in Abuja on Saturday.

Oyekanmi said the commission was already meeting with officials of the National Union of Road Transport Workers on the new development.

“Well, first of all, I am aware that the commission, in the last couple of days, met with the officials of the NURTW to discuss this matter, and I’m sure the resolution was reached.

“Of course, when you are planning for an election, you have what is called contingency because you don’t know what can happen. There could be changes and all of that.

“So, we don’t expect transporters to operate at a loss. If oil has gone up, for instance, and they now want some increment, this could be discussed.

“Like I said, I wasn’t part of the meeting, but the meeting was held, and I’m sure some agreement was reached.

“We have to conduct that election. So, I don’t think that will cause some problems,” he said.

Oyeknami also said that the commission had implemented measures to prevent cases of prefilled result sheets witnessed in Kogi from reoccurring in Edo or future elections.

He said, “I can assure you that the Commission took active steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“In fact, our result sheets cannot be forged because they are custom-made. They have security features, but nobody knows what those security features will be.

“So, INEC has been able to perfect that aspect, that if you go ahead and print result sheets, you have just wasted your time because you will not have access to what we have, and you will not be able to make use of it.

“Again, our resource management process takes care of errant behaviour like that.”

Oyekanmi also assured Nigerians that it would not be possible to collate results in any polling unit where the election is not held in Edo.

“That’s not possible because if an election is not held in a place, it has to be reported.

“All the polling units, over 4,500 of them, will be used. So, there is no polling unit that will not have voters.

“However, if the election does not take place because of one reason or the other, of course, the presiding officer has the duty to report that.”