The Independent National Electoral Commission has commenced the distribution of sensitive and non-sensitive materials for the by-elections in the Anambra-South senatorial district and Onitsha-North 1 state constituency.

The INEC had scheduled the elections for August 16.

INEC’s resident electoral commissioner in Anambra, Elizabeth Agwu, disclosed this while distributing the material on Thursday in Awka.

The exercise was carried out at the premises of the Central Bank of Nigeria, before the representatives of various political parties, security agencies and the media.

“We have been planning for this Anambra South Senatorial district by- election and Onitsha South State House of Assembly by-election. These by-elections were generated as a result of deaths of the two occupants of these seats.

“We are at the CBN today with all the concerned parties to access the sensitive materials such as ballot papers, results sheets. We packed the other sensitive materials such as the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and Electronic Voter Registration (EVR) at the INEC office.

“We came over to the CBN to open other sensitive materials which we received on Wednesday night at the CBN here,” she said.

Ms Agwu disclosed that the sensitive materials kept with the CBN arrived on Wednesday night, while the non sensitive materials had already been received by INEC.

According to her, all the parties are here; the observers, media and security agencies and we opened everything before everybody and they testified that there was no “magomago” (fraud) and everything went on fine.

All the materials for the two elections were received and signed for onward movement to the eight local government areas where the polls will take place on Saturday by the concerned political parties and party agents.

She explained that the two by-elections in the state aim at filling the vacant seats at both the Senate and State House of Assembly, following the deaths of late Sen. Ifeanyi Ubah, Young Progressives Party, who represented Anambra South and late Justice Azuka, Labour Party, who represented Onitsha North constituency 1 at the Anambra legislature.

The REC urged voters to come out en masse to cast their votes for the candidates of their choice.

“We want the electorates to do away with rumour making the rounds that the commission had already written results of the elections or will rig the process in favour of anybody,” she said.

According to Ms Agwu, as we are speaking now, the vehicles are loading and they are going to the local government areas where they will continue the election process.

She said that 8,400 adhoc staff with four adhoc staff per polling unit would participate in the elections.

Ms Agwu said that over 8,170 registered voters are expected to come out to cast their votes during the Onitsha North 1 State constituency poll while the figure for the Anambra South senatorial poll could not be ascertained as of the time of this report.

She assured the public of adequate security, following a resolution after a meeting of Inter Security Agencies for Election Security and stakeholders of the eight LGAs towards ensuring a hitch free, peaceful and transparent exercise.

“All the security agencies for the election have been moved to different areas for the election. They include the police, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Department of State Services (DSS) and others.

“We are poised for success, security agencies have assured Anambra people that there will be no loss of lives. They warned that people should mind their businesses, if you have no business with voting and elections on that day stay in your house,” she said.

(NAN)