By Jubril Bada
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Less than 10 days to the 2019 general elections, a total of 398,958 prospective voters are yet to collect their Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) in Ondo State, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC has revealed.

The commission further revealed that, a total of One million, four hundred and twenty nine thousand, two hundred and sixty one (1,429,261) PVCs have been distributed out of One million, eight hundred and twenty eight thousand two hundred and nineteen (1,828, 219) registered voters in the state as at January 2, 2019.

The INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner REC in Ondo state, Dr. Rufus Akeju, disclosed this at a press briefing held at the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Press Centre, Alagbaka, Akure on the state of preparedness of the commission for the upcoming general elections in the country.

He explained that claims raised by stakeholders during the display of preliminary  register of voters exercise, by the commission in the last quarter of 2018 were treated, as the names of dead persons that were still in the register as at then were identified for deletion.

Akeju disclosed that the presidential and National Assembly elections and that of the House of Assembly will hold in 3,007 polling units of the state on February 16 and March 2 respectively.

The Commissioner informed that the recruitment of all Ad-hoc staff to participate in the elections is almost completed

According to him, ” Serving Corp members constitute the bulk of Ad-hoc staff for the elections based on the existing MoU between INEC and the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC”.

He disclosed further that other categories of staff were sourced from the pool of Federal Tertiary Institutions and Federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies among others.

The commission, he said has been meeting regularly with security agencies to formulate strategies to identify and mitigate all potential triggers of violence and insecurity during and after the elections.

He said various measures are being adopted by the commission to mitigate the challenge of vote buying in the forthcoming elections through restriction of the use of smart phones and other photographic equipment in the voting cubicles among others.