The office of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Akure, the Ondo state capital was last night gutted by a mysterious fire which destroyed over 5100 card readers. Vanguard gathered that the card readers were meant for the next month governorship election in the state.
An eyewitness account told vanguard that the mysterious fire which started around 855pm razed a large container where the card readers were stored. He said that the inferno which was noticed around 8:03 pm affected the ICT Unit of the commission.
According to him ” Men of the fire service who arrived later at the scene of the fire after an hour were helpless as their truck refused to work while the fire servicemen from the airport arrived at exactly 9:14 pm Officials of the commission watched helplessly as the fire consumed the container.
The National Commissioner in charge of information and voters education, Festus Okoye and the state Resident Electoral Commissioner Ambassador Rufus Akeju expressed shock.
They told newsmen that the ugly incident ” is definitely a setback but it won’t affect the October 10 governorship election. They said that the fire affected the ICT section of the commission, and over 5100 card readers had been burnt in the inferno.
Okoye explained that about 1000 card readers delivered to the INEC from Osun were also burnt in the fire incident while the over 4000 belonging to the INEC in the state were also burnt.
VANGURD
