Less than a week to the 2019 presidential election, the office of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Qua’an Pan LGA, Plateau State was gutted by fire on Saturday. Osaretin Imahiyereobo, Plateau State INEC Head of Department, Voter Education and Publicity, in a statement, confirmed the disaster.
“The INEC office is completely burnt with all its content…ballot boxes, Generators serviced and filled with fuel, cubicles, newly printed electronic and manual voters register, uncollected PVCs, materials for the preparations of REC and other materials yet to be identified,” Imahiyereobo said.
According to Imahiyereobo, the incident was caused by a drunken security man. “It is true that our office in Qua’anpan has been gutted by fire caused by the negligence of a security man on duty who didn’t know how to operate the generator but wanted to put it on. The office is completely burnt to ashes with all the valuables in it destroyed
“Items such as ballot boxes, generators filled with fuel, cubicles, newly printed electronic and manual voters register, uncollected Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs), materials for the preparations of RAC and other valuable materials were affected,” he said.
He described the incident as a setback for the preparations for the general elections in the Local Government Area. He said the management team led by Alhaji Rasheed Gbadamasi, the Administrative Secretary of the commission in the state, were already on the scene to assess the situation.
In a related development, INEC in Abia has said only 319 PVCs were burnt in last Monday’s fire at the commission’s office at Isiala Ngwa South Local Government Area of the state. Godfrey Achibie, Head, Voter Education and Publicity of the commission, confirmed the figure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Umuahia. He dismissed as unfounded, media reports that over 15,000 PVCs were destroyed by the fire.
According to him, only a section of the office, where the PVCs were stored, was affected by the fire and not the entire building. He said that the commission was deeply concerned about the incident and was taking serious steps to quickly address it. Achibie gave assurance that the commission would replace the burnt PVCs, but could not confirm whether they would be ready before the Feb. 16 presidential poll.
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