By Lucky Best Ogbes on May 11, 2020
The Independent National Electoral Commission has given further detail on the Ondo and Edo State gubernatorial elections.
There have been fears that the electoral umpire might postpone the elections due to the outbreak of Coronavirus in the country.
the Commission’s head of media and publicity committee, Mr. Festus Okoye in an Arise NEWS breakfast show in Abuja announced that the elections in both states would go on as scheduled. “we all know the challenges the country and indeed the world is facing with the coronavirus and the need to continue to observe the social distancing as a means of combating the spread, so we advise political parties to embrace the online campaign method, using the social media and other technologies”
“You know, by now we ought to have been doing registration of new voters who just clocked the voter’s age of 18, but sadly, we are unable to do that exercise also because of the pandemic, so we are going to be using the old register, which means a lot of people will be disenfranchised”.
The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic across the states of the federation, holding Edo and Ondo where elections are scheduled has given rise to questions, if the social distancing directive would hamper campaigns and even the election.
As at today, the Nigerian Center for diseases Control, NCDC says the total cases of Coronavirus in the country is 4,399 and 143 deaths.
The gubernatorial elections in Edo and Ondo States are slated for September 19 and October 10 , 2020 , respectively .