TheCable

Solomon Soyebi, national commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), says corps members are to blame for the late arrival of electoral materials at several polling units in Anambra.

Soyebi told Channels Television that some corps members were hesitant to go to some areas while others did not have the right attitude towards the election.

“We have some problems with the corpers, especially those that we brought from outside the state. Most of them did not want to go to where they were posted,” he said.

“There was a mix-up in the posting of corpers, it is caused by corpers’ mix-up. In fact, in Awka-South here, we had to shift about 180 (corps members) to Nnewi-North and South at about 8:30, that is going to cause some delay.”

It is normal practice for INEC to take on corps members as ad-hoc staff during an election.

He assured that the logistic challenges including card reader failure would not stop the election. TheCable had earlier reported that INEC officials switched to manual accreditation in some polling units when card readers failed.

Willie Obiano, governor of the state and aspirant of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), was accredited manually before he voted because the card reader in his unit failed.

“About four of them (card readers) have failed but they have been replaced I can assure you. We told you yesterday that they are machines that are bound to malfunction but definitely they have addressed that issue very promptly,” Soyebi added.