Fire guts 5,000 INEC card readers in Ondo

A fire broke out today, Thursday, September 10, 2020, at the Ondo State Head Office of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in Akure.

The inferno, which gutted the container housing Smart Card Readers, started at 7.30 pm. Men of the Fire Service are, however, currently containing the fire.

The National Commissioner, Barrister Festus Okoye, who is in Ondo State in connection with preparations for the Ondo State governorship election scheduled for October 10, 2020, rushed to the office at about 8 pm.

Okoye confirmed that about 5,000 card readers were burnt and destroyed.

The Administrative Secretary of the State, Mr. Popoola, and some staff of the Commission are also there.

Barrister Okoye said the investigation into the cause of the fire will commence promptly after the fire has been contained.

He, however, said that the inferno would not affect the conduct of the state election as needed card readers would be mopped up from other states not conducting elections.

“The fire Service  men are still battling to put it out and we are confident that it would soon be put out.

“This is just one state election. What we are going to do is to mop up smart card readers from other states and use them for the conduct of the election while investigating what happened.

“The cost of  5,141 smart card readers is so much, but we are not going to dwell on that now. 

“What we are going to dwell on is to mop up smart card readers from other states  that are not conducting elections and use them to conduct Ondo governorship election.

“We will dwell on other issues regarding the configuration of the cards readers.”

It will be recalled that  4,695 smart card readers were destroyed by fire that razed its facilities at INEC headquarters in Awka, Anambra  in February 2019 barely four days to the Presidential and National Assembly elections.

There was also a similar incident in 2019 at the INEC office in Plateau State and Abia State where its facilities including card readers were destroyed by fire, but the commission was able to handle the situations without disrupting the electoral process as planned.