No holiday for varsity students, others

The Provost, Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo, Prof. Adeyemi Idowu, has said that students in the various higher institutions in the country will not be on forced holiday during the general elections.

The development has, therefore, laid to rest, the growing apprehension among the students who were anticipating that they would not be able to vote if their school was on break since they registered on campus.

Idowu, who stated this while inaugurating the new excutive of his school’s Students’ Union on Wednesday, said the decision was taking at a recent meeting of Academic Boards of tertiary institutions in the country.

He said the body had argued that a compulsory holiday for the students would not be necessary because most of them did their voter registration exercise at their various institutions.

The Resident Electoral Commissioner in the state, Mr. Akinyemi Orebiyi, expressed fears that students of higher institutions who might be on holidays during the election may not be able to vote if they leave the areas where they registered.

Orebiyi, who addressed journalists in his office also explained that the Electoral Law 2010 would be used to conduct the April polls.

Orebiyi said that the agency had deleted 14, 000 names from its voter register.

He explained that the deleted figure were persons who indulged in multiple registration during the last voter registration exercise.

The REC who did not give details of the areas where the multiple registration was mostly recorded, explained that one person was arrested among them for registering four times.

He said, “We have perfect data at INEC. The electronic data collection system that we adopted was very effective. We were able to identify about 14, 000 people who engaged in multiple registration.

“We have since deleted their information from our data base and we were able to arrest one of them while trying to register the fourth time. We have since charged him to court.”

Orebiyi assured the people of Ondo State that INEC had put in place necessary arrangements to ensure a hitch free election devoid of fraud.

Part of the strategies put in place according to him, include the use of three helicopters and six speed boats to convey personnel and materials to the difficult terrains in the riverside communities in the state.

He said, “We have been able to secure three helicopters that we will use to convey our personnel and materials to areas that are not easily accessible either by road or on water.”