Kwara State Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Garba Madami, has pledged to conduct free, fair and credible elections in the state.

Madami made the pledge during the roundtable on peaceful 2019 general elections held in Ilorin, the state capital, yesterday.

He stated that he would give all the political parties level playing ground.

The REC added that peoples’ votes would count as the permanent voter’s cards (PVCs) and card readers would not malfunction.

The event was organised by the Centre for Peace and Strategic Studies (CPSS), University of Ilorin, and entitled, “A Recipe For Sustainable Peace, Security And Development.”

“As far as INEC Kwara is concerned we are going to conduct free, fair and credible elections that everybody will be proud of. That is why I redeployed some of my staff that have overstayed in one location,” he stated.

On election violence, the resident electoral commissioner said: “Violence in elections is caused by three things. The first is INEC. If INEC is not neutral then there will be problem. Secondly, if the security agencies are not neutral there will also be a problem.

Thirdly, the politicians themselves, the politicians are the ones that hire thugs; they are the ones that cause problems.

“They are the ones that will send their children abroad and then use the children of the poor to cause mayhem. As soon as there is crisis they will be the first to leave the country with their private jets leaving poor to suffer the consequences. We have to be wary of them.

“That is why I want to say very clearly here that we have what is called inter-agency consultative committee on election security (ICCES) and it is headed by the police. Remember that election is a civil duty that does not require the services of the army. The army is to serve as a back-up.

“Our politicians are so desperate this time around because our card readers and the PVCs work fairly very well in 2015. Now our card readers’ workability is about 90 per cent. We have upgraded them.

Nobody will be disenfranchised. Election is going to count and the issue of rigging in the past is gone because even our ballot papers are coded from polling unit to the next.

“This accounts for the reason why desperate politicians are going for vote-buying. We are doing everything possible to minimally curtail vote-buying. We have set a mechanism in motion to monitor political spending. That is the major reason why politicians have not been spending money lavishly in their various campaigns,” he said.

Earlier, vice chancellor of the University of Ilorin (UNILORIN), Prof Sulyman Abdulkareem, decried the palpable tensions and fear ahead of the forthcoming elections.