By CHIDI NKWOPARA
Imo State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Professor Seline Okoh, has denied the rumour making the rounds that INEC colluded with the state government to replace trained youth corps members with untrained people brought by politicians.

Professor Okoh debunked the rumour when she played host to the Minister of Interior, Capt. Emmanuel Ihenacho, in her office.

She explained that the commission engaged 7,046 corps members to man 3,523 registration centres across the state, stressing that some of the challenges facing the exercise in the state were human.  He noted that some of the registration officers manning the equipment were not properly trained.

Professor Okoh explained that the commission had invited one person from each of the 27 local councils in the state for further retraining; and that some of the officers were now becoming proficient.

Speaking also, INEC Supervising Officer in charge of Enugu and Anambra States, Mrs. Gladys Nwafor, stated that all hands were on deck to address the challenges facing the exercise in her area of jurisdiction.

Speaking earlier, the Minister of Interior, Captain Emamanuel Ihenacho (rtd), called on INEC to immediately replace some of the faulty equipment across Imo State.

He informed the REC that he had carefully monitored some of the registration centres in his Emekuku, Owerri North local council area country home and came to terms with the problems facing those manning the registration equipment.

The minister explained that he first visited INEC registration Ward 1, Ezeogba Emekuku, and expressed shock that the scanner used for capturing the finger prints of prospective voters at the venue was not functioning.

Ihenacho similarly visited the next registration centre at Emekuku High School, where he spent about 23 minutes before he was successfully captured by the scanning machine.

He passionately appealed to the REC and her lieutenants to visit the registration centres, with a view to addressing some or all the challenges facing the field staff, even as he lamented that some of the registration officers in some of the polling units were pretending to be working while sitting down, doing nothing.

“If you capture the photograph of the individual and you cannot capture his finger prints, then how can you validate that the man is the properly registered voter? If we continue at this pace, we will not be able to do this job in two weeks,” Ihenacho said.