Polling officials in different areas of Ondo State on Saturday completed accreditation manually after card readers failed to read fingerprints of voters.
At Ikanmu Oka-Akoko, unit 5, Ward 2, the card readers had serious problems reading the finger prints, thereby slowing down the process.
The problem was also encountered at Ikanmu Unit 3, Ward 2, leading polling officials to adopt the manual method.
Head of INEC team in the area, Mr. Adelani Paul, told one of our correspondents that efforts to get replacements had not been successful, saying the option opened to them was the manual method.
At Unit 15, Ward 3, Iselu Street, in Owo, polling officials also said that the card readers had problems reading finger prints and they had to embrace manual accreditation of those whose fingers could not be read.
Also at Unit 16, Ward 4, Oke Ijebu, in Akure, polling officials said they had initial problems with many voters whose fingers could not be read by the machine.
“They were very many and we had to resort to accrediting them manually,” one of the officials said.
PDP candidate for the House of Representatives for the Okitipupa/Irele Federal Constituency, Omogbemi Michael, while seeking .to get accredited at his unit, lamented the problems with the card readers.
“When they tried to use the card reader, it was showing a wrong date and it has refused to work. The manual registration started at 12:15pm and only a few people had been registered,” he said.
Also at Ward 11, Unit 8, Supare, in the Akoko South West, polling agents told our correspondent that the card reader machines were making the process slow and that it would be difficult to meet the time set for the accreditation process.
But the Resident Electoral Commissioner in the State, Mr. Olusegun Agbaje, said the commission was addressing the problems.
