INEC, CAN, others work for peaceful elections

                            
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has advised politicians not heat up the polity.

INEC Chairman Mahmood Yakubu spoke yesterday while giving update on INEC’s preparation. He assured Nigerians and international community that the commission would ensure free and fair polls on Saturday.

He said: “While we fully understand the disappointment and even anger that followed that rescheduling of the elections on 16th February, I wish to appeal to stakeholders to be more dispassionate and circumspect in their comments in order not to overheat the polity.”

Yakubu also debunked the report that one of the National Commissioners was invited by the Department of State Security (DSS).

He said: “No commissioner of the commission was picked up by any security agency, no house of any commissioner of INEC was raided, no commissioner of INEC has been picked up by security agencies.

“The particular commissioner you are referring to that was mentioned in the social media is as we speak in his office in the commission. No six directors were picked up by any security agencies.”

Yakubu added: “All decisions of the commission are taken by the commission as an independent constitutional body and we will continue to protect and jealously guide our independence”.

Also reacting to the punishment for ballot box snatchers, the INEC boss said the commission would stand by the law which has stipulated some measures of punishment for would be offenders.

“The position of the commission is that all violators of Electoral Acts should be punished according to the provisions of the Electoral Act,” he said.


The Act stipulates two years jail term for any offender.

He said all the electoral materials have been successfully deployed to the states.

He also revealed that 95% of the Smart Cars Readers have been configured ahead of the scheduled time.

Yakubu further assured that the remaining 5% would be concluded by Wednesday.

He also said it was not true that one of the suppliers of the Smart Cars Readers was involved in the configuration process; stressing that the configuration was done entirely by the staff of the commission.

The INEC boss also said the commission has not received any complaints of missing result sheets.

According to him: “The commission is unaware that any of our result sheets have gone into the wrongs hands, yes we agreed that we deployed on Saturday but we recalled the sensitive materials and returned them to the vault of Central Bank.”

He went on: “To ensure the integrity of the process and the audit that I promised stakeholders on Saturday, we dedicated today in all the states of the federation to confirmation and verification of the materials returned to the Central Bank by political parties and other stakeholders before we begin deployment to local government from tomorrow and it is not only the EC8A- the result sheet for the polling units.

“The commission is focusing on the elections to be held on 23rd February and 2nd March 2019 to ensure that they are free, fair and credible.”

He further added: “By 4pm yesterday (Monday), all issues relating to the delivery of the materials were identified and virtually addressed. Ballot papers, result sheets and a host of non-sensitive materials are now in location across the 37 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

“Our state offices commenced the process of inviting stakeholders to the Central Bank of Nigeria to examine the retrieved materials deployed last week and to witness the batching of materials according to Local Government Areas. This is ongoing at the moment and is expected to be completed today Tuesday, 19th February, 2019.

“The movement of materials to LGAs for batching according to wards and polling units shall take place on Wednesday and Thursday.”

On the possibility of voting in Borno State, Yakubu said: “We have identified eight local government areas where citizens reside in IDP camps, we will afford citizens to vote in the camps based.

“For what we know elections will take place in Borno State in the substantial part of the state in a normal way, just like Nigerians will vote in other states.”