Saturday polls shaky -Jega, REC’s can’t reach a decision – Fears of possible shift loom over logistics problem

Posted by admin Elections 2011, INEC Politics, Top Stories Wednesday, April 6th, 2011

The situation reports from the Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) on the magnitude of the logistic problems facing the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has cast a pall of uncertainty on Saturday’s rescheduled National Assembly election.
After a nine-hour meeting with the RECs in Abuja yesterday, sources told Daily Sun that the commission could not conclude emphatically that it was set for the election for which Nigerians are already looking out for after it was aborted last Saturday.

As the meeting was going, the rumour mill was agog with the threat of resignation from office by the INEC Chairman, Prof Attahiru Jega, allegedly due to perceived insurmountable problem of logistics before the election on Saturday.
However, his media aide, Kayode Robert Idowu, promptly dismissed the rumour.

The state by state situation reports by the RECs, it was gathered, were said to have overwhelmed the INEC Chairman, especially when confronted with reports of expended ballot papers in some states where election held before the announced postponement and the widespread confusion occasioned by the mix-up in the logo and names of some of the parties on the ballot papers.

Worried at the possibility of having ballot papers re-printed in those states and the fact that many other states where election did not hold might suffer a similar fate on Saturday, sources at the meeting disclosed that the commission settled for the auditing of the ballot papers to ascertain the magnitude of the unpleasant situation of the electoral agency.

Consequently, the meeting directed the Operations Department and that of the Logistics to carry out a comprehensive audit of the ballot papers and options open to the commission to wriggle out of the embarrassing situation.

As the meeting with RECs rose, Prof Jega summoned another parley of the commission’s board to further discuss pointedly what INEC should do in the present circumstances.
The meeting which was on-going at Press time, would be concluded today, after the commission would have gotten first hand situation report of the status of ballot papers across the country so as to take the next line of action.

Sources at the meeting confided in Daily Sun that Prof Jega is faced with two options, either to postpone the election in states where it is discovered that the available ballot papers would not be enough for the rescheduled election so as to allow for reprint or suspend the election nationally till when all states will have enough materials for the elections to hold same day.

“The elections have never been this bad in this country,” the source lamented.
However, inside sources stated that it was a stormy session at the Conference Room of the Chairman where every REC took his turn to explain to the commission about his preparations and challenges for Saturday’s election.

All the National Commissioners as well as the Heads of Departments were not left out as they explained how far they had gone in their preparations for the National Assembly poll.
The main bone of contention, Daily Sun learnt, was the feasibility of the dates already announced by Jega for the elections. The coincidence of the April 26 governorship election and the West African Examinations Council’s (WAEC) scheduled tests were yet to be trashed out.
INEC Director of Public Affairs, Mr. Emmanuel Umenger, told anxious journalists that the Chairman of the commission decided not to brief journalists since the meeting was not conclusive and agreement yet to be reached.

While apologising to journalists at the media centre of the commission, Umenger said Jega will brief journalists tomorrow (Thursday) after the meeting would have been completed.
In his reaction, Idowu explained that the meeting centred on the preparations of the RECs and logistic issues.
According to him, “materials for the elections have been deployed to the states.”
He stated that the commission was not contemplating shifting the National Assembly rescheduled poll in any states and that what was being considered was the extent to which the ballot paper would be augmented in some areas where the election held last Saturday.

“It is not necessarily states, it could be a ward, a constitutency and so on, the Commission has not said it would not hold elections in any of the states,” he declared.

-Sunwp_posts