BY OLA AJAYI

IBADAN – THE Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, in Oyo State, Mr. Ayo Adakeja has described alleged N20m bribe to tamper with the data in the Direct Data Capture machines as mere figment of imagination of some parties.

He assured the people of the state that contrary to the claims in some quarters that the data in the machines had been altered, no damage had been done to the registered names of eligible voters in the state.

While clarifying issues on the six machines recovered from some of the staff of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC,  in an hotel behind the Government secretariat, he stressed that the commission would not have a repeat of display of voter registers as it had recorded no loss as a result of the unwholesome behaviour of the suspects.

The Head of the ICT unit of the commission in the state and some alleged agents of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, were apprehended in the hotel with the machines.

The REC said, “I am happy to inform you that there was no damage, either to our server or any other electronic storage has been recorded. Aside from this, you will recall that we have a couple of backups during the last voters registration.

We are not nursing fear of data loss due to the alleged doctoring of the list.”

According to him, the report that 27 out of the 33 local government councils in the states had names of registered voters altered were nothing, but a mere rumour.