The Chairman of the Ondo State Independent Electoral Commission, ODIEC, Joseph Aremo, has expressed dissatisfaction with the low turnout of voters during Saturday’s local government election in the state.

While describing the voter turnout as unencouraging, Aremo urged political parties to sensitise the people more ahead of future elections.

The ODIEC Chairman, who stated this after monitoring the electoral process in Akure South, Akure North, and Ifedore local government areas of the state, disclosed that the commission was proactive in the buildup to the poll.

According to him, ODIEC did everything possible to ensure the prompt and early deployment of both sensitive and non-sensitive materials.

Aremo stressed that despite the efforts by the commission to avoid hiccups during the election, the turnout was still unencouraging.

Meanwhile, the Commissioner of Police in the state, Wilfred Afolabi, who monitored the exercise within the Akure metropolis, commended the people of the state for their peaceful conduct.

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Voter apathy marred the local government election held on Saturday across the 18 local government areas of Ondo State.

Most of the residents did not participate in the election as the polling units monitored were scanty with no queues of voters.
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IOur correspondent reports that in Akure South Local Council and Akure North Local Council Areas of the state, polling officers and security personnel were sitting idle waiting for voters.

With 922 voters registered at Ward 4, Unit 7, Ojumu, Akure South, only 96 people had voted at around 11:00 am with no other voter insight.

However, at ward 9, unit 3, Oba-Ile, the numbers of voters were a bit high, as one of the councillorship candidates was said to be from the unit.

Meanwhile, the restriction of vehicular movement by the police was not effective, as motorists, particularly those in transit through the state, moved freely.

Most of the streets visited had youths playing football while commercial motorcyclists made brisk business.

The Independent National Electoral Commission has announced that 7,746 deceased voters were removed from the national voter register in 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory as of December 2022.

The Director of Voter Education and Publicity, Victoria Etta-Messi, disclosed this to our correspondent on Thursday.

“Seven thousand, seven hundred and forty-six decreased persons across the 36 states and the FCT were removed from the National Register of voters as of December 2022,” she disclosed.

According to INEC, a thorough cleaning of the voter register is usually done before every general election.

In its 2023 post-general election review in December 2024, INEC highlighted challenges with cleaning up the voter register, despite improvements in the voter registration process that added 12,298,944 new registrants.

One major issue is the difficulty in removing deceased persons due to gaps in official death records.

“Problems with official death records continue to make it very difficult for INEC to remove deceased registrants,” the commission noted.

The commission also identified the problem of double or multiple registrations, which was addressed by deploying the Automated Biometric Identification System.

 This process flagged and removed 2,780,756 cases of invalid registrations, representing 22.6 per cent of all new registrants nationwide.

INEC further noted concerns about declining voter turnout. The 2023 presidential and National Assembly elections recorded a turnout of 27.5 percent, down from 35.6 per cent in 2019.

Some stakeholders attributed this decline partly to an inflated voter register and called for more rigorous efforts to clean it.

Stakeholders at the review recommended that INEC should strengthen collaboration with agencies such as the National Population Commission and the National Identity Management Commission to identify deceased voters.

There were also calls to suspend individuals who have not voted in the past three elections and require them to revalidate their registration.

“One suggestion from this review was to strengthen collaboration with other agencies such as NIMC and NPC to identify deceased persons in the register and remove them. In addition, the commission could suspend individuals who have not voted in the past three elections from the register and request them to revalidate their registration,” INEC noted in its review.