Election postponement: INEC yet to decide – Jega

The Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission
(INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, has reacted to the spate of
appeals for the postponement of next month’s general
election, stressing that the electoral commissioners have not
met to take final decision on the possibility.
Although Jega assured that the Commission will meet the
electoral time table target, he however noted that
postponement is not a decision he can take alone without
consulting his commissioners despite the unconfirmed appeal
by the National Security Adviser (NSA).
Speaking during a programme: ‘Mitigation of Violence in
Election (MOVE) Project organised by IFES, Professor Jega
said: “We have all read the statement attributed to the NSA
for the postponement of the general election, but I don’t want
to comment on it until I confirm and get clarification because
it would be premature to do so.
“In any case, what I normally communicate to the public is
the Commission’s decision. The Commission has not sat to
discuss and take decision on this matter and I will therefore
appeal to people to be a bit more patient. I cannot just com­
ment on this issue now.
“However, I want to emphasis that everything we are doing
including the challenge of the distribution of the Permanent
Voters Cards (PVCs), which we believe is something we can
address long before the date of the election.
“I don’t know what anyone else wants me to say. We issued a
timetable for the February 14 election almost one year ago
and we have been very busy working to implement that
timetable to the letter,” he noted.
While giving update on the distribution of PVCs, Prof Jega
revealed the Commission’s plan to extend the distribution till
the eve of the election, disclosing that over 58 million PVCs
have been produced including the latest delivery of 4.1 million
PVCs.
“We have already decentralised the distribution of the cards in
order to hasten the process of collection. It was formally in
local government offices, but following the anxiety and
agitations and the fear that we might not finish the
distribution before the election, said instead of local
government offices, we decentralised to ward level. People can
now go to ward levels to collect the cards. Secondly, we
increased the duration of the distribution including Saturdays.