INEC probes Abuja office fire, reveals damages

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said that preliminary investigations into the fire incident at its Abuja office had begun.

The commission said through its National Commissioner and Chairman of its Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, that the damages it suffered as a result of the fire incident were very minimal.

Okoye, who spoke to newsmen after inspecting the burnt office on Saturday said the documents lost were “just files and duplicate copies of some correspondences.”

According to him, critical documents relating to the commission’s activities with political parties were not affected.

He said, “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.”

He went further to explain that 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.

“We don’t have any serious challenge with just what happened. But there has been damage to public property, computers, photocopiers and critical instruments we use to work. But in terms of losing documents, there is no cause for alarm,” he maintained.

On what happened he said, “Some of our critical staff were in the office and noticed that fire started from the office of the Director of Election and Party Monitoring.

“They rushed in and called the Fire Service. Our own internal Fire Service was here, they responded and personnel of the Federal Fire Service also responded and they were able to successfully put off the fire.

“You can see that the fire didn’t take place at the INEC Headquarters. The INEC Headquarters is intact, it is just an office adjacent to our Media Centre outside the big INEC Headquarters. We have gone there and we’ve seen what the issues are.

“The personnel of the Federal Fire Service were here, they have done some preliminary investigations.”