It has emerged that the position of the security
services advising against the conduct of the 2015
elections in February was actually a lifeline
handed to the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC), which was ill-prepared to
conduct the elections this month.
A Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) assigned
to one of the northern states, who spoke to
THISDAY on the condition of anonymity, said the
advice by the security chiefs and the National
Security Adviser (NSA) to defer the elections
because of the security situation in the North-east
gave INEC the much needed breather to prepare
adequately for the polls.
He said contrary to reports that 21 of the RECs
had opposed the postponement of the polls during
their meeting at the weekend with the INEC
chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, that was not the
case, as all they did was to give him situational
reports on each of the 36 states of the federation
and Abuja.
The INEC REC further revealed that the training
and simulation exercises for INEC officials and
thousands of ad hoc staff on how to use the card
readers for the permanent voters’ cards during the
polls had not been conducted.
“The training manual is not ready while
simulations for the card readers have not been
conducted. Our personnel and ad hoc staff do not
know how to use the card readers, and some that
have been tested were not working.
“Apart from this, over 23 million registered voters
had not picked up their cards; that is about 34
per cent of registered voters. So were we going to
disenfranchise them under the pretext that not all
of them would vote?
“It is not INEC’s responsibility to dwell on voter
apathy. Ours is to ensure that all cards get to the
voters. Whether they turn out to vote or not is
their prerogative, not that of INEC,” he said.
The REC said Jega had not been entirely honest
when he made his presentation to the Council of
State last week on the preparedness of the
electoral commission for the polls.
“We were far from being ready and had we
proceeded with our state of unpreparedness in
February, we would have faced greater challenges
than what we encountered during the 2011
general election when we were forced to postpone
the elections by two weeks.
“So the insecurity in the North-east has offered
INEC a lifeline to get its act together and sort out
most, if not all, pending issues before the polls
start on March 28,” he said.
www.thisdaylive.com/articles/revealed-shift-of-election-was-a-lifeline-for-inec/201368/

Ok. I knew INEC is incompetent. Security concern is a lame excuse to veil their failure. *sips bobo.

It is sad dat jega has not clarify dis
I can tell u dat my brother applied online for exercise and he only left not more than three hours ago for d training
Inec is not prepared for d elections, no need to cast d blame on Gej
I guess dey are doing dis to favour Apc but deceiving Nigerians just to grab power is very bad and is not d change we need

APC fans will not see this. Evil fools