As the Ondo State gubernatorial election draws closer, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has responded to recent comments by Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, accusing him of making baseless allegations.<\/p>\n
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During the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) campaign rally in Akure, Makinde had called for the removal of Mrs. Toyin Babalola, the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) for Ondo State, alleging she is from the state. He argued that Babalola\u2019s ties to the state could compromise the fairness of the election, scheduled for November 16, 2024.<\/p>\n
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In response, INEC took to its verified X (formerly Twitter) handle to deny Makinde\u2019s claims. The commission stated:<\/p>\n
\u201cOur attention has been drawn to an allegation made by the Governor of Oyo State, Mr. Seyi Makinde, at his party\u2019s campaign rally held today in Akure, in which he called on the INEC Chairman to remove the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) for Ondo State, Mrs. Toyin Babalola, because \u2018she is from Ondo State.\u2019<\/p>\n
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\u201cFor the avoidance of doubt, Mrs. Babalola is not from Ondo State, in line with the Commission\u2019s policy not to deploy a REC to his or her state of origin.\u201d<\/p>\n
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INEC further noted that this was not the first time Makinde had made such accusations. It recalled a similar incident in 2020, ahead of the previous gubernatorial election in Ondo, when the governor claimed that a senior INEC official was colluding with the Vice Chancellor of a federal university to influence the outcome. INEC emphasized that the 2020 allegations were also false.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe appeal to holders of high public office, such as Governor Makinde, to verify their information before making these serial, unfounded allegations,\u201d the commission added.<\/p>\n
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INEC\u2019s statement underscores its commitment to upholding transparency and impartiality as the state prepares for the upcoming election.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the Ondo State gubernatorial election draws closer, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has responded to recent comments by Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, accusing him of making baseless allegations. During the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) campaign rally in Akure, Makinde had called for the removal of Mrs. Toyin Babalola, the Resident Electoral […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":52258,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172,186],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-52257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics","tag-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52257"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52287,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52257\/revisions\/52287"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}