TheCable

Nkem Okeke, deputy governor of Anambra, says the state’s governorship election is the smoothest he has ever seen. 

Speaking to journalists after casting his vote, Okeke said the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) functioned properly and the biometric process was stress free. 

He said he was impressed with the massive turnout of voters whom he had earlier thought would be deterred by apathy and security problems, adding that the security presence facilitated by the federal government helped ensure voter turnout.  

He said the process has been “very transparent” and is confident about the early collation of the results. 

“This was probably the smoothest process I’ve ever seen. Before, normally I have a problem with my fingerprint.  Before, the machine will not recognise my fingerprint but this one recognised it quite well. It didn’t even take a second before that took place. This is smooth, you can see people are voting, it’s peaceful,” he said. 

“So far everything seems to be going well. I’m actually impressed with the turnout. I had prayed against voter apathy, security issues, security problems, it seemed to have helped, people are here to vote, to exercise their civic rights and I’m quite pleased.   

“I want to believe it’s the federal government, the amount of security they put in place for this process, it’s important, people need to feel free to exercise their civic rights on who leads them into the next level and I think these things work, it really works. 

“I’m quite happy, you know to look around, even the police presence we are talking about is not here, people are seen to be calm doing their voting and going about their business. I’ve just done mine. 

“It is very, very transparent, the point is simple, you go in and present your card, they check your card, they look through the card to make sure that it’s actually your voting booth. Once you do that, the next step they do is to make sure it is actually in the system, they go through that new device they have.

“Next thing is they give you your voting card to go and cast your vote into the box. It’s quite interesting. I’m happy with the way things are going quietly. I believe that if this goes like this we would get the result in no time.”