ABUJA, Federal Republic of Nigeria (Report by Joe Nwankwo) — In less than 24 hours, the much-awaited Presidential Election will take place. Despite fears and anxiety across the country, two important institutions, the security arm and the Electoral Commission, have assured the nation that all is well. The Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman Abba, has unveiled what appears a water-tight security modus operandi just as the INEC boss, Prof Attahiru Jega, has announced perfection of the electoral arrangement for tomorrow.
Jega also allayed fears of another shift in the date for the conduct of the 2015 general elections in the country as he declared that the March 28th for the Presidential and National Assembly elections and the April 11th for the Governorship and States Houses of Assembly elections remains sacrosanct.
The last batch of the 500,000 Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) were made ready on Saturday, March 21. Speaking in Abuja at the Civil Society Situation Dialogue Session, on the level of the preparedness of the Commission for the polls, the INEC Chairman stated that the Commission is fully prepared to deliver a free, fair, and credible elections.
According to him “all the National Commissioners are now in the field to access the level of preparedness they are covering the 36 States of the federation and the FCT, as far as we are concerned we are fully prepared for the elections, and from what we have seen so far, there is no more fear of any further shift in the dates for the elections, so elections would go on as scheduled on March 28th and April 11th, we have identified the gaps that needed to be filed and we have filed all those gaps, on March 7th we decided that one of the things we needed to do was to do field demonstration of the card readers to dispel the fears of Nigerians, we chose twelve states and in each of the states we chose a ward and we demonstrated the card reader and did a mock test, and we also had a meeting with the RECs who briefed us on the level of preparation.
“We are very pleased to note that we used the six weeks period to firm up our preparations, if we had done the elections on February 14th we would have done it with a collection rate of 67% of PVCs but as at now we have eleven states that have attained over 91% collections while most have attained over 80% and above collection rate. We also used the period of the extension to do an additional training for our staff, we have specifically designed a one week raining for those that would handle the card readers, we believe all these will add value to public concerns on the limited efficiency of our staff in handling the card readers, we have also used this period to intensify our voter education.
Jega noted that, “We believe that the 2015 elections would be much better than that of the 2011. In fact we believe it would be the best elections ever conducted in this country. Yesterday I was able to brief the National Security Council on the remaining concerns, particularly as it affects protecting our staff and providing adequate security for the elections, and we were able to receive assurances that the security agencies are doing all they can to ensure that adequate security is provided.
“We were told that it is only about three local government areas that is still being held by the insurgents, we are in collaboration with the security agencies to arrest known political thugs across the states to avoid a reoccurrence of the post-election violence that occurred in 2011. This time around we have planned to use a better facility for the collation of election results in Abuja, we have secured the International Conference Centre for that purpose as it would be more spacious and conducive for that purpose. The deployment of sensitive and non-sensitive materials we have no problems at all as we have done that successfully.
The INEC Chairman further said that, “We have insisted that public officers should not move around with their security details in the name of monitoring elections, we are going to insist that Ministers and governors would not be allowed to move around with their retinue of security agents in the name of election monitoring, we did a comprehensive screening of electoral officers and we even dropped some, we had always insisted that electoral officer should not serve in their states of origin, we only married women but we insisted that they will not serve as EOs and not in their local government areas we have tried to reduce the incidence of rigging.
On the areas that were reclaimed by Nigerian troops from the Boko Haram Jega pointed out that “In areas where the troops have reclaimed and the people have moved back we have told our RECs to go back there and evaluate the situation, with a view to conducting elections in those areas and if they have not moved back, we would go ahead and conduct the elections in the IDPs camps. Card Readers uses our territorial networks, Nigeria is not 100 % covered in terms of network but the card reader works. And we are using various networks; we use them as they affect each area.
He said that the Commission has not placed a time frame for accreditation noting that “the Commission will stop accreditation when the last person on the queue has been accredited. On the collection of PVCs by proxy, I will not rule that out because there was collection by proxy and it was all over the country, but wherever our staff are involved we sanction them because we have said that there should be no collection by proxy. All our officials must comply with the guidelines for the elections, whenever there are reports of any of these challenges we have situation rooms, and once we get any report we will show and correct it. The card readers in some cases the percentage of the finger print reading is low, and we have provided the incidence forms, where the card readers fails in a particular polling unit and cannot be rectified, we would have to cancel elections in such polling units and come back to that polling unit the following day to conduct elections and in all our demonstrations no card reader has failed and we have extra batteries in case of failures.
Jega also spoke on Wednesday when he unveiled the Situation Room of the coalition of over 60 civil society organisations (CSOs) under the auspices of the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room organised with the support from the UK Department for International Development (DFID) ahead of the polls in Abuja.
Besides the commission’s preparedness, the INEC chairman said security agencies have also given their strong assurances of support for the commission.
“So, we are all set for the 2015 general elections. We will do our best and we also look forward to the reports and the inputs from this Situation Room. So, we have done quite a lot and we believe God willing, all will go well.
“As I have said, we have strong assurances from the security agencies, especially from the Inspector General of Police that they will give us all the necessary security support both for accompany materials and personnel to the collation centres and to the polling units, as well as securing the collation centres during collation and tabulation and announcement of results, and also in terms of ensuring that the voting environment is safe for voters to be able to come out and to discharge their obligation,” he said.
He said the commission, through its electoral institute, had trained some political parties’ agents in order to ensure election credibility. “Because if parties are not able to appoint agents or they appoint agents who lack credibility, people who in the past we know could easily be bought by other agents and they will just do what other agents want, then obviously there will continue to be challenges. So, we contributed, through our electoral institute to the training of trainers of parties’ agents.
“We asked them to nominate and we trained them; a few of them had gone back and actually did the training of their agents. But we hope that this time around, we see a more improved process of nomination and appointment of parties’ agents,” he said.
He stated further that the commission also urged parties’ agents to accompany the presiding officers together with security agencies to the ward collation level even though they normally receive copies of the results after the results are signed and declared at the polling units, “so that there is no doubt as to whether along the line, results have change between the polling unit and the collation centre.”
Now that it is all clear that the election will take place, against fears and predictions that it would be postponed, eligible Nigerian voters would troop out tomorrow to decide the way forward for Nigeria. At home and abroad, the prayer is that the contestants and their supporters would demonstrate true sportsmanship and avoid bloodshed and waste.
