Some vital documents have been destroyed in the fire incident which gutted the Independent National Electoral Commission’s office in Abuja, Saturday Punchgathered.
But the commission, which said preliminary investigations had commenced, told chairmen and leaders of political parties not to be worried as most of the documents relating to the activities of political parties had already been moved to a different office.
“The critical documents relating to our activities with political parties were not affected because they had been moved out even before this particular incident.
“So the damage was very minimal and the documents we lost were just files and duplicate copies of some correspondences and so there is no cause for alarm,” the INEC National Commissioner and chairman of its Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, said.
He told journalists after inspecting the burnt office that the fire, which started between 11 and 11:30 am at the Department of Election and Party Monitoring, was caused by an electrical fault.
He said, “Every national commissioner in INEC has the manifestos, constitution and every other thing relating to political parties. I am telling you that most of the documents relating to the monitoring of political parties had already been moved from this office because the director is also relocating to a different office. So, they had been moved out before this fire incident.
“The documents you find here are documents that are just correspondences, but the main documents are properly secured. Almost every document we have in EPM, we also have them also in the Legal Department.
Source: PUNCH
