According to him, he saidL “In his presentations to the council, the INEC chairman stated clearly that for the electoral process to be free, fair , and credible there are other matters which were not under the control of INEC principal among which is the issue of provision and guarantee of security of lives and properties.”
“No time during the meeting did Jega insist that the elections must hold on the Feb 14th and 28th 2015 as reported in the media, noting that Jega gave the council a report on the progress so far made by the INEC on its preparedness for the elections.
“In all his submissions, the only process that was 100% concluded was the preparation and availability of the voters register. All other processes including provision, distribution and collection of PVC’s, printing of ballot papers, distribution of verification machines and other non–sensitive materials, recruitment and training of adhoc staff were as at 5th February 2015 all ‘works in progress’; with some assurance that all will be ready on or before 14th of February 2015. The chairman also mentioned clearly that given a little more time INEC would be in a better position to perfect these processes and its readiness for the 2015 Elections.” He said.
Furthermore, Okupe said security chiefs were unanimous in their advice to the council that it would be impossible, for now, for them to guarantee security of electoral materials, INEC staff, and the voting population in the areas currently engulfed by the war against insurgency.
He said Jonathan made it clear that he could not, in good conscience, endorse an electoral arrangement where people from a section of Nigeria would be excluded from the electoral process due to no fault of theirs, or by virtue of just being unfortunate residents of an area under siege of terrorism,
He also said other things about the President being careful to not disenfranchise some people as a result of issues that is no fault of there's.
“Gentlemen, you can imagine, under this very tense and highly competitive situation, a situation where 500 voters have queued up to vote and after initial 100 voters, the card readers fail; and 400 people are told to return the next day to start the accreditation and voting process all over again. As I speak with you, the majority of the 960,000 adhoc staff are yet to be recruited and trained especially on the operations of card readers that are yet to be made available.
“As of today, Lagos is yet to receive a balance of about 12,000 card readers for elections in a week from now.
“The interest of this government is to ensure that we don’t have rancorous and poorly conducted general elections that will throw the country into turmoil and confusion, with the likelihood of an unnecessary internal and external rejection and condemnation”
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