Election: Ayade’s Aide Explains Near-Death Experience, Advocates Electronic Voting System

By Efa Sunday, Government House Correspondent

Director General of the Ayade Care Home Health, Dr. Genevieve Banarby-Ephraim has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), to embrace electronic voting system, as the commission prepares for 2023 General elections.

Dr. Barnaby made this call yesterday while speaking to CrossRiverWatch in an exclusive interview in Calabar. Mrs. Ephraim said electronic voting will reduce rising issues of electoral violence during elections.

While narrating her near-death experience encountered during the recently concluded Guberbatorial election at Ifondo, in Akpabuyo Local Government Area, she said,”I was working until about 3pm on the election day, which was when all the counting was going on in all the polling units, when I received a call from Ifondo in Akpabuyo saying that there was problem there because as they said, the margin between PDP and APC was too high, it was about ninety-six to twenty, so they would not allow the INEC staff to count the other boxes.

“They held the INEC officials hostage as well as beating up the Police officer, and I needed to come there with Mobile Policemen, which I obliged. On getting there I saw the INEC officials sitting as hostages while they were beating up the Police officer and shouting APC,” she continued.

The Ophthalmologist added that, “Though we couldn’t pack all the ballot papers because they were all scattered on the floor and destroyed, we were able to rescue the INEC officials and the police officer.”

The CEO of Vital Signs also called on Security Agencies to recruit Armed Security Forces, solely for election purpose, while calling on all to eschew electoral violence, adding that “nobody should lose their lives just because of trying to vote.”

She in turn expressed her delight over the victory of Senator Ben Ayade as the returned Executive Governor of Cross River State, while admonishing Security operatives to bring to book perpetrators of the ugly acts meted on INEC officials at Ifondo on the 9th of March, 2019.