ELECTION WOULD HOLD AS SCHEDULED - JEGA

Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega has said the general elections will hold as rescheduled on Saturday next week.

Jega stated this in Abuja yesterday at a session with members of Election Situation Room made up largely of civil society organizations.
“We are adequately prepared for the rescheduled elections, I have not seen any indication from anywhere for further postponement,” he said
The Presidential and National Assembly elections were rescheduled from February 14 to March 28 while the governorship and state assembly elections were shifted from February to April 11th.
Jega said internally displaced persons would vote at their temporary camps as originally arranged.
“ In places where people have moved back and it is verified that it’s safe to conduct elections, polling units would be set up to prevent the disenfranchisement of any citizen,” he remarked.
He said the last batch of 500,000 permanent voters card would be ready by tomorrow.
Jega said no armed or uniformed security personnel should accompany anyone to the polling unit on the Election Day.
He said the commission faced difficulties from high profile people and top government officials who break this rule.
“We’ve been emphatic with our security operatives on the need to be more diligent, that those guidelines are complied with,” he said
He made it clear that all electoral officers who breach the laws guiding the electoral process would be punished accordingly
He said ballot boxes have been colour coded to ease and make clear differentiation on the political offices being voted for.
“Because we are having three sets of elections on the same day we are using three ballot boxes and two for March 28th and April April 11th respectively” he added.
The director Information Communication Technology of the commission, Mr Chidi Nwofor said that network breach would not stop the card reader from doing its work in terms of accreditation and authentication.
He said: “You can send cue and delay until the network is back, because these machines have been set to suit the network coverage of each region”.
Chidi said people who try to carry out criminal activities such as ballot stuffing would be wasting their time.
He said: “The new voting system using the PVC’s have eliminated most challenges that have bedevilled the electoral process over the years such as multiple voting, improper compilation of results and ballot stuffing.
“The timeline of the card readers had been programmed in such a way that accreditation can take up to 6pm, but at 1:30pm nobody would be allowed to join the queue again.”
He said further that the time frame was given as a precautionary method to prevent officials from starting off accreditation at odd hours.
Earlier the coordinator of the situation room Clement Nwankwo had said civil society organizations would take Jega for his words.
“We do have confidence that the card reader would be very good in curtailing electoral fraud. We are confident about the card reader machines,’ he remarked.