84 million Nigerians to vote at the general elections

At least 84 million Nigerians are expected to vote in the February 16 and March 2 general elections.

After the mandatory display of the register in all polling units nationwide for claims and objections from 6th – 12th November 2018, the final register for the 2019 General Elections stands at 84,004,084 voters.

Mahmood Yakubu, Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) announced this Monday at the regular quarterly consultative meeting with political parties at the Electoral Institute, Abuja where the voter register was presented to each political party.

Yakubu disclosed that the Commission has printed and delivered the Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) to the States for collection by registered voters and urged all registered voters who have not collected their PVCs to approach any of the INEC Local Government Area offices and other designated collection centres nationwide to pick up their cards.

He said, “while we are encouraged by the response so far, millions of cards are still yet to be collected. I wish to reiterate that the Commission will not allow the collection of PVCs by proxy. Registered voters should endeavour to collect their cards personally without which no person can vote on election day”.

The INEC Chairman re-emphasised that the Smart Card Readers will be used for the 2019 general elections for accreditation of voters to confirm, verify and authenticate the voter and as well as to confirm that the PVC is genuine and issued by INEC so that cloned cards or cards that do not match the codes for a particular polling unit in which the voter is registered will be rejected by the Card Reader.

According to him, “the separate Incident Form used in previous elections which is only completed by the Presiding Officer without the involvement of the voter is now abolished. Similarly, the claim that the Card Reader has been enhanced to recapture voters’ fingerprints at polling units and automatically overwrite the biometric record on our database is untrue and should be disregarded”.

Yakubu noted that as campaigns are going on nationwide, INEC will keep very close watch on campaign finance, particularly to closely monitor spending by parties and candidates as well as individual and group donations to campaign organisations.

“We will discharge this regulatory responsibility diligently. The Commission has designed Campaign Finance Reporting Forms to ensure compliance with the reporting requirements by parties. The EC16C for annual finance reporting by parties, the EC16D for income (including contributions and donations) and EC16E on party expenditure are already available on the Commission’s website”, he stressed.

While announcing the methods put in place to checkmate the menace of vote buying, the INEC Boss said, “First, we altered the configuration of our polling units by moving the ballot boxes closer to the voting cubicles in order to make it difficult for voters to expose their marked ballot papers.

“Secondly, we have introduced a partial ban on the use of mobile phone and other photographic devices by voters while in the voting cubicles. Thirdly, we are introducing the rolling and flattening of ballot papers by voters before casting them into the ballot boxes”.

Meanwhile, the Inter Party Advisory Council, IPAC has accused INEC of sabotaging the electoral process to favour the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC and warned the INEC Chairman not to tinker with any process that would skew victory to the APC as Nigerians would stage resistance.

Ugo Ikenga, IPAC Secretary who spoke with journalists after meeting with INEC particularly accused the Commission of refusing to publish the details of the number of eligible voters in every polling unit across the country.

Ikenga also faulted INECs decision to allow eligible voters to thumbprint a box next to their picture on the register and to enter their mobile phone number before proceeding to vote when the bio metric authentication fails.

He stated that with the Minister of Interior and other security Heads being from one section of the country, the method would ease rigging for the ruling APC with the supervision of the security Chiefs.