BY GBENGA OLARINOYE
OSOGBO—The Osun State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Amb Oloruntoyin Akeju has attributed the malfunctioning of some of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Direct Data Capturing DDC Machines to variation in the weather condition betwen the country where they are manufactured and Nigeria.

Akeju made the disclosure while fielding questions from newsmen at INEC headquarters in Osogbo yesterday when the zonal commander of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, in charge of Oyo, Osun and Ogun states, Alhaji Mudu Bunu visited him during an inspection tour of the state on the ongoing registration exercise.

According to him, the weather difference from the country where the machines are manufactured responsible to a large extent why there were some initial problems.

The REC stated that the machines originated from a temperate region where the weather was extremely cold “and with our own weather which is extremely hot there are bound to be this kind of initial problems.”

Akeju however disclosed that the commission was gradually overcoming the initial problem as majority of the machines are now operating at maximum capacity.

He said that the commission between Sunday and Monday had registered over 150 voters in the state.

His words “there is improvement on a daily basis on the number of people we are able to register. For instance on Sunday we registered about 60,000 voters while the number had increased to 90,000 by Monday.”

Responding on the allegations of some pockets of crises in some registration centres across the country, the NSCDC zonal commander said security would be reinforced with security agents at all the centres in the country.

Alhaji Bunu said “We will seek the assistance of our colleagues, the police and the SSS to help us secure the safety of the machines and protect the lives of the personnel from being attack by hoodlums