How INEC was sabotaged – Yakubu – Great Achiever Magazine

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has blamed not
just logistics challenge, but also sabotage of its efforts, as some of
the reasons responsible for the one week shift in the elections.

INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu

The Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu disclosed this at the
meeting of the commission with stakeholders on Saturday in Abuja.

lNEC has rescheduled the 2019 general elections by one week by
postponing the Presidential and National Assembly elections from Feb. 16
to Feb. 23, and the Governorship, State Assembly and FCT Area Council
elections from March 2 to March 9.

Yakubu said that the plan for the 2019 general elections was ready in
November 2017 and INEC subsequently issued the timetable and schedule
of activities for the elections over one year ago, on Jan. 9, 2018.

He said that the commission carefully followed its timetable and
implemented 13 of the 14 activities as scheduled and had not missed the
date fixed for any single activity.

He, however, said that in preparing for the elections, the commission
came face-to-face with the realities of conducting such an extensive
national deployment of men and materials in a developing country like
Nigeria.

He said that not only had INEC recruited and trained about one
million young people to serve as adhoc staff, it had also undertaken
steps for the deployment of the magnitude of materials mobilised for the
elections.

“For instance, the Commission has printed 421.7 million ballot papers
for six scheduled elections, as well as 13.6 million leaves of result
forms for the Presidential election alone.

“Indeed, managing 91 political parties and 23,316 candidates for whom
votes will be cast in 119,973 polling units by over 84 million voters
is certainly astounding.”

Yakubu said that it was not unexpected that such a tremendous
national mobilisation of men and materials would encounter operational
challenges and INEC has had its own fair share of such challenges.

He disclosed that there had been delays in delivering ballot papers
and result sheets for the elections, which according to him, was not
unusual.

“However, I must emphasize that all the ballot papers and result
sheets were ready before the elections despite the very tight legal
time frame for finalizing nomination of candidates and dealing with the
spate of legal challenges that accompany it.

“In this regard, the Commission has been sued or joined in over 640
court cases arising from the nomination of candidates,” adding that as at
today, there were 40 different court orders against the Commission on
whether to add or drop candidates.

“The net effect of these is that there is usually roughly a one-month
window for the Commission to print ballot papers and result sheets and
either fly or transport them to several destinations until they finally
get to each polling unit.

“Unfortunately, in the last one week, flights within the country have
been adversely affected by bad weather.

For instance, three days ago,
we were unable to deliver materials to some locations due to bad
weather.

“We therefore had to rely on slow-moving long haulage vehicles to
locations that can be serviced by air in spite of the fact that we
created five zonal airport hubs -Abuja (North Central), Port Harcourt
(South South and South East), Kano (North West), Maiduguri and Yola
(North East) and Lagos (South West) to facilitate the delivery of
electoral logistics. ”

Yakubu said that apart from the logistical challenges, INEC also
faced what may well be attempts to sabotage its preparations, which
include serious fire incidents in three of its offices in lsiala Ngwa
South Local Government Area of Abia State, Qu‘an Pan Local Government
Area of Plateau State and its Anambra State Office at Awka.

“In all three cases, serious disruptions were occasioned by the fire,
further diverting our attention from regular preparations to recovery
from the impact of the incidents,” as the commission had to replace all
affected materials, including the Permanent Voter Cards.

He recalled that in over 4,600 prepared Smart card readers which took
at least six months to procure was destroyed by fire at its Anambra
State Office at Awka.

“Despite this setback, we have practically recovered from this by
mopping up every available spare SCR across the country and within 24
hours delivered them for elections to hold in Anambra.

“All these challenges mean that there have been differences in preparations from one State to another.

Yakubu said that the overall assessment of INEC was that if the
elections went on as planned, polls would not open at 8a.m in all
polling units nationwide.

“Yet, we are determined that polls must hold at the same time
everywhere in the country. In this way, elections will not be staggered.

“This is very important to public perception of elections as free,
fair and credible. We promised Nigerians that we shall be open,
transparent and responsive.”

He said that faced with those challenges, INEC initially thought that
it only required a maximum of 24 hours to resolve the logistics issues
involved and complete its deployment for the election.

“This would mean shifting the elections to commence on Sunday Feb.
17. However, given the restriction of movement during elections, that
could affect many voters who worship on Sundays.

“While the Commission was considering the following Monday Feb. 18 as
an option, our lCT Department advised us that it would require five to
six days to reconfigure about 180,000 Smart Card Readers earlier
programmed to work only on election day Feb. 16.

“It is for this reason that the Commission decided to adjust the
election dates to Feb. 23 for Presidential and National Assembly
elections and a consequential adjustment of Governorship, State Assembly
and FCT Area Council elections to Saturday March 9.”

Yakubu, who said that some sensitive materials had been distributed,
assured that all such materials had been retrieved and would be taken
back to custody of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

He assured stakeholders that there will be proper audit to account for all materials.

The chairman said that in the next few days, the Commission would
work on the completion/confirmation of deployment of materials by
Monday, Feb. 18 and as well as the Configuration of the Smart Card Readers
between Sunday, Feb.17 and Thursday, Feb. 21.

According to him, INEC will also work on the receipt and deployment
of sensitive materials to local government areas between Wednesday, 20
to Thursday, Feb. 21.

“Refresher training for ad hoc staff on Thursday Feb. 21, deployment
of personnel to Registration Areas on Friday, Feb. 22 and the
election day on Saturday, Feb. 23.

Yakubu on behalf of the commission appealed to Nigerians and all
stakeholders for their understanding on what had been “a very difficult
decision” for the Commission.

“As Chairman of INEC and on behalf of the Commission, we take full
responsibility for what happened and we regretted any inconvenience our
decision might have caused.”