ABEOKUTA: Saturday’s bye-election into the Ikenne/Remo North/Sagamu Federal Constituency of Ogun State was overshadowed by violence, ballot box snatching, malfunctioning electoral devices and widespread voter apathy.
The exercise, which began with a low turnout of voters around 8:30am, was further marred by the inability of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System BVAS to recognize some elderly voters in several polling units across Ikenne and Remo North local government areas.
Trouble erupted in the afternoon when armed hoodlums stormed Wesley Nursery and Primary School, Iperu, in Ikenne Local Government, disrupting the voting process with sporadic gunshots.
The polling unit, which happens to be the voting centre of the 2023 governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party PDP, Hon. Oladipupo Adebutu, had by midday recorded 123 accredited voters out of 750 registered voters, before the attack.
Witnesses said about six masked men arrived on motorcycles, shooting indiscriminately with dane guns.
The chaos forced INEC officials, party agents, accredited voters and journalists to flee the venue, giving the attackers free rein to cart away ballot boxes.
While the violence in Iperu created panic, polling units in other areas recorded a different form of setback—poor voter turnout and BVAS hitches.
At Igan/Ajina polling unit 16, ward 2 in Remo North, only 64 voters had been accredited out of 445 registered as of 11am.
Similarly, in Ajegunle ward 6, unit 1 in Ogere and Town Planning Ilisan 1 polling unit with 953 registered voters, turnout was dismal, with fewer than 100 accredited voters reported by midday.
The BVAS failure left many elderly citizens frustrated. One of them, 70-year old Sobanke Fasasi at Wesley School Isara 2, polling unit 006, lamented his inability to vote after repeated attempts at accreditation.
“I am surprised and sad because I have not been able to vote. I came forward two times for accreditation and each time the BVAS could not recognize my face. I don’t know what happened,” he said.
One of the election ad hoc personnel confirmed that the BVAS often struggled to identify aged voters.
