Management of The Polytechnic Ibadan on Wednesday conducted the Student Union Government (SUG) election of the institute through electronic voting
The voting which commences around 11 am ended at 6 pm and winners emerge for various offices
Speaking in the development Mrs Ayoade Abosede Olu Deputy Registrar Student Affairs said the new initiatives was to curb the pre and post-election violence which has been a tradition in the institution
“ Before now, the election is always mar with violence and crisis but now we all have our peace, the voting is going on peacefully students don’t need to be on campus before voting once they can access the portal “
Both the students and management prefer this system of voting because , there is less stress and it cost less, though there are few challenges but I am sure there will be improvement in subsequent election
“We started very well and its going on very well, it’ the best option that we have now and kudos to the school management for coming out with this one, the election has been on since morning and you can see people sitting down no tension, we are okay
Speaking on the challenges, Mrs Ayoade said the only complained we had was that some people are voting outside by hacking into the system but that has been resolved everything is normal now
She added further that “It took us a long way before we can calm the aspirant down and convince them about this option, we are supposed to have this election since August but we shifted it now to perfect the system because we don’t want any crisis or post-election violence It takes us a time before we convince them
Some of the candidate agents who spoke with our reporter commended the Management of the institution for the initiatives and harps on the need for improvement on the system
Akpeji Clement ,one of the students said “This is the first time the poly Ibadan is organizing such an innovative set up of voting online, is a very good one, before now there were a lot of anxiety, student wondering how will it go about especially how they would log on to the website , with what we have seen everything is going fine we hope that other institutions and the government could emulate it to control election violence
“ With this system of voting we have no option than to be satisfied with the outcome of election, though a lot of student were unable to vote base on the fact that we have to log in with our second school fee receipt, the fact that I have not paid my school fee receipt doesn’t mean that I am not a bonafide students of the polythecnic of Ibadan the management should been have consider we will accept the result
Asked wether they were properly briefed about the development Akpeji said “ We were informed but the time frame was short and you don’t expect everybody to comply, those who are yet to pay are students they should be allowed
Oyekunle Yusuf, Accountancy department maintained that “ We are aware but I think they need to give us demo to know how to go about it not every students are familiar with this new system but it is a very democratic way of electing our leaders “
The school Public Relation Officer, Alhaji Soladoye Adewole while briefing the media on the development said the school management set up electoral committee which includes Faculty officers, Student representative council SRC, Student Press Council, Pro and others to decide on what modalities to adopt for the election and the e-voting was the best option
Soladoye said “ We settled for the e-voting and streamline the pre-election process , no posters no open campaign and this will no doubt make the election peaceful
