By Nwakaego Alajemba and Oluwatobi Opusunju
Dr. Kayode Fayemi of the All Progressives Congress in the Ekiti State governorship election has won the poll held at the weekend in an election exercise marked by heavy mobilization of personnel and technology by the Nigerian government.
The Ekiti State election put to test a new vehicle tracking system to monitor real time movement of sensitive election materials introduced for the first time by the Independence National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Ekiti served as the testing ground for the for the tracking system ahead of the 2019 general elections to assist INEC in monitoring, tracking and even listening to all the communications going on in all the vehicles deplored.
Before the election, INEC tweeted: “New innovation. For the first time, INEC is able to track all vehicles carrying sensitive materials to locations real time from departure, en route and arrival. See a snapshot of the tracking screen. #EkitiDecides2018”.
The tweet ended with the hashtag #EkitiDecides2018.
During the election, INEC kept watch over its tracking devices with its techie team monitoring movement of election materials and keeping watch to checkmate politicians’ foul games.
At the end, Fayemi polled 197,459 while his main opponent, Prof. Kolapo Olusola of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), scored 178,114 votes.
The election in Ekiti was also transmitted electronically; a fallout of INEC’s partnership with the Nigerian Communications Satellites (NigComSat) Limited and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), to allow for seamless transmission of election results through the telcos.