There were revelations in Abuja on Monday on why
President Goodluck Jonathan and the national leadership of
the ruling Peoples Democratic Party were angry with the
Chairman of the Independent National Electoral
Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega. Punch reports.
A week-long investigation showed that the President and his
party are not happy with Jega over his insistence that the
commission would use the Permanent Voter Cards for the
election.
The PVCs were used for the conduct of the governorship
elections in both Ekiti and Osun states, which were won by
the PDP and the All Progressives Congress respectively.
Apart from this, the President and the party were also angry
that the commission was going ahead with its decision to
use card readers.
This technology was however not used in both Ekiti and
Osun states elections.
The commission has said that the card reader can only read
PVC issued by it and that any person that shows up at the
polling unit without a PVC or with a card not issued by INEC
will not be able to vote.
It was learnt that the Presidency and the ruling party were
not totally against the use of the PVCs, but they were not
happy with the use of card readers.
A worker in the Presidency who spoke with our
correspondent on Sunday queried the insistence of INEC
under the leadership of Jega to go ahead with the two
items.
He said, “Now, what we are saying is that yes, the PVCs
were used in both Ekiti and Osun governorship elections but
the way and manner the PVCs are being distributed now is
suspicious.
“Look at the figure of those who have collected from the
northern part of the country and look at the figure from the
southern part, where President Jonathan hails from.
“If the election is going to be by ethnic sentiment alone, you
will know that our President has been defeated already. So,
that’s the reason.
“Look at Ogun and Lagos states, which we all know are
politically sophisticated. Why are the electorates not
picking their PVCs? We are worried.”
In terms of PVCs collection, figures released by the
commission indicated that Ogun State is lagging behind
among all the states of the federation, including the Federal
Capital Territory.
In the state, only 808,590 out of the 1,829,534 registered
voters had collected their PVCs. This figure represents a
mere 44.20 per cent.
But the commission said that 1,387,401 PVCs had been
delivered to the state.
Lagos State with 5,822,207 registered voters had recorded
63.44 per cent of the PVCs collection. This shows that
3,693,355 of the cards had been picked by their owners.
But the commission said that 5,558,062 cards had been
delivered for voters in the state.
This means that there are 1,864,707 PVCs yet to be picked
by their owners in the state.
When asked whether the refusal of the owners of the PVCs
to pick them up could be attributed to Jega, the source said
that the commission should embark on more
enlightenment.
On the issue of card readers, a member of the National
Working Committee of the party, who spoke on condition of
anonymity, said that there was no way the machine would
be effective in the area of accreditation of voters.
When this issue was raised before the commission, an
explanatory note presented to our correspondent showed
that accreditation of a voter using the card reader is
expected to last for about 20 seconds. CLICK HERE TO READ FULL AND TOUCHING NIGERIAN CELEBRITIES BIOGRAPHY AND SCANDALS
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