By SIMON EBEGBULEM
FEAR gripped some candidates who emerged as flag bearers of their respective parties at the just concluded primaries of political parties in Edo State, as the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in the state commenced display of their credentials for public scrutiny.

Meanwhile, the Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, in the state, Dr  Rose Obofuoribo, disclosed, yesterday, that a total of 1,615,450 persons registered in the state in the voters’ registration exercise,  describing the exercise in the state as very successful.

The REC, who explained that the Commission decided to display the particulars of all the candidates as submitted by their political parties so that members of the public will scrutinize them with a view to knowing whether the informations are correct, said it would assist in ensuring that people with bad records do not contest the next elections in the state.

As at the time Vanguard visited the INEC office at about 2:30pm, yesterday, particulars of 18 candidates were displayed and majority of them, Labour Party candidates.

According to her, “we are going to display these particulars which are in their form CF001, in various wards and local government areas too. It is going to be there for seven days before we can now release the full list of qualified candidates. The final list will come after this claims and objections period. This will enable members of the public to also investigate these candidates before they will vie for the proper elections.”

On the just concluded voters’ registration exercise,  Mrs Obofuoribo, said  “we recorded remarkable success here in Edo State. We earlier had problems in Uhumnwonde, Owan East and West. But what we did was that when we received more machines, we immediately deployed them to these areas and that made the registration in these areas faster.”