No Going Back On February Elections - INEC

The dates for the general election in February may be hanging in the balance as the nation’s national security adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd), has called for postponement to give the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) more time to distribute about 30 million permanent voter cards (PVCs) to eligible voters.

But, INEC has declared that there was no operational reason, including the concerns over the distribution of the PVCs, to postpone next month’s general election.

Dasuki spoke yesterday during a talk show at Chatham House, the London think-tank group.

According to Reuters, the NSA said he had discussed the matter with the INEC chairman, Prof Attahiru Jega, adding that a delay within the time allowed by the law will not be a bad idea.

"That is what we are encouraging at the moment", he said, noting that INEC had been able to distribute 30 million PVCs but had an outstanding 30 million others to hand out.

He further said that although INEC had assured him it would achieve the task in time for the February elections, he thought it would make more sense to take more time. According to him, there is a 90-day window during which the election can legally take place.

Dasuki was said to have told Jega: "It costs you nothing, it’s still within the law", adding that it was for INEC and not him to decide on the matter. "What sense does it make to vote three months early when there are 30 million cards still with INEC? That’s my position".

However, INEC has said there is no basis to postpone the election, reports LEADERSHIP newspaper.

The commission further added that there was no communication from the presidency to postpone the election over complaints of the PVCs distribution.

The chief press secretary to the INEC chairman, Kayode Idowu, said: "We have not received any official or unofficial communication to that effect. From the point of our operation, the commission has not seen any good basis to postpone the election."

Kayode, however, pointed out that information available to the commission with regards to what transpired at the London meeting was contrary to what the NSA was quoted to have said.

He stated that the claims that 30 million uncollected PVCs were not true, noting that there has been accelerated distribution and collection of cards since the decentralisation of the process.

According to him, rough estimates indicate that the collection process has surpassed 70 percent since the decentralisation of the distribution of the cards at the ward level.

Kayode said: "Where are the 30 million cards that have not been collected? Statistics are cold; they are not flighty. By the commission’s rough estimation, even though we have not collected the raw data from the states, we have cases of over 26,000 PVCs collected in states in a space of three days, and this could be the trend across the country.

"I can assure you that the percentage is much higher than 70 percent.

"What we do is that immediately the cards come in, we move them to the states. We just moved four million cards recently."

He assured that before the end of the month most of the PVCs would have been distributed and collected.