Lady whose wedding is on election day begs INEC to consider her and change date
As the impact of the postponement of the 2019 elections continue to
be felt across Nigeria, Miss Rita Osawende, a bride-to-be has lamented
its impact on her marriage plans. In an interview with the News Agency
of Nigeria on Saturday in Benin, she said her marriage was shifted from
February 16 to February 23 because of the elections. The Independent
National Electoral Commission postponed the dates for 2019 elections
from February 16 to 23 and from March 2 to March 9 for the
Presidential/National Assembly and the Governorship/House Assembly/FCT
Area Councils elections.
Osawende said that all arrangements for her big day had been
concluded for next week. “INEC please help me revisit this issue. “The
original date was fixed for February 16, but as soon as I knew it’s
elections day, it was postponed to February 23rd. “What do I do; all
arrangements have been made. “I have printed and distributed my
invitation cards for the wedding. I am so confused,” she told NAN.
About thirteen hours ago, 1 conveyed to Nigerians the decision of the
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to reschedule the
2019 general elections by one week. Presidential and National Assembly
earlier scheduled for 16‘“ February 2019 will now hold on Saturday 23″
February 2019 while Governorship, State Assembly and FCT Area Council
elections scheduled for 2““ March 2019 will now hold on Saturday 9‘I
March 2019.
The one-week adjustment was a painful one for [NEC but necessary in
the overall interest of our democracy.Nigerians will recall that when
this Commission was appointed in November 2015, we promised Nigerians
two cardinal things. First, we shall work hard to consolidate the
improvements made in the management of elections in Nigeria since 2011.
Secondly. we shall always be open, transparent and responsive.
We
have striven diligently to keep these promises in very trying
circumstances. In keeping with our promise to consolidate the gains of
the last two electoral cycles, the Commission has conducted 195 rerun
and off-season elections across the country since the last general
elections. Most of these elections have been generally adjudged to show
progressive improvements in planning, execution and outcomes. This
commitment to continue to improve on election administration has
informed our preparations for the 2019 general elections. Our goal is to
plan carefully, execute meticulously and bring stability into election
management in Nigeria.Consequently,
we announced fixed data for elections in Nigeria to the effect that
Presidential and National Assembly elections will always hold on the
third Saturday in February of an election year. while the Governorship
and State Assembly elections follow two weeks later. Having settled
this, we began the planning quite early, with a Strategic Plan (SP), 3
Strategic Programme of Action (SPA) and an Election Project Plan (EPP).
In fact, the plan for the 2019 general elections was ready in November
2017 and we subsequently issued the timetable and schedule of activities
for the elections over one year ago on 9″I January 2018.
We
carefully followed the timetable and implemented 13 of the 14
activities as scheduled. We kept to the time-frame and have not missed
the date fixed for any single activity. In preparing for the 2019
general elections, we have come face-to-face with the realities of
conducting such an extensive national deployment of men and materials in
a developing country like ours. It is said that elections constitute
the most extensive mobilization of men and materials that any country
could undertake in peacetime.The
challenges of doing so, even under the best of circumstances, are
enormous. Within a period of 16 months, we registered over 14 million
Nigerians as new voters, collecting their names, addresses, photographs
and their entire ten fingerprints. Beyond that, we prepared, printed and
delivered their permanent voter’s cards for collection. I should note
that of the 14.28 million Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) made available
for collection, about 10.87 million or 76.12% have been collected. It is
often not appreciated the magnitude of activities that the Commission
undertakes during general elections. Not only we have recruited and
trained about 1 million young people to serve as ad hoc staff, the
magnitude of materials mobilized for our elections, is enormous. 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. No doubt. preparations for the 2019 general
elections have been extremely tasking for the Commission. It is
therefore not unexpected that such a tremendous national mobilization of
men and materials will encounter operational challenges and we have had
our own fair share of such challenges.
There
have been delays in delivering ballot papers and result sheets for the
elections which are 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. As at today, there are
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 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 Yale
(North East) and Lagos (South West) to facilitate the delivery of
electoral logistics. Apart from these logistical challenges, we also
faced what may well attempt to sabotage our preparations. In a space of
two weeks. we had to deal with serious fire incidents in three of our
offices in Isiala Ngwa South Local Government Area of Abia State, Qu‘an
Pan Local Government Area of Plateau State and our 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. In lsiala Ngwa South, hundreds of
PVCs were burnt, necessitating the recompiling of the affected cards
and reprinting in time to ensure that the affected voters are not
disenfranchised. I am glad that all the cards were quickly reprinted and
made available for collection by their owners.
ln Qu’an Pan Local Government Area. our entire office was razed,
destroying all the materials prepared for the elections printed register
of voters, ballot boxes, voting cubicles and several electricity
generating sets. ll Registration Areas and over IOO polling units were
affected by the fire. We recovered quickly and have since replaced
everything destroyed. In addition, we secured a suitable building from
which to conduct the elections.
Perhaps
the most serious was the fire incident in our Anambra State Office at
Awka, which destroyed over 4,600 Smart Card Readers being prepared for
the elections. These Card Readers take at least six months to procure.
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 State.
All these challenges mean that then: have been differences in
preparations from one State to another. Our overall assessment is that
if the elections went on as planned, polls will not open at 8am 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 the public perception of
elections as free. fair and credible. We promised Nigerians that we
shall be open. transparent and responsive.
Faced
with these challenges, we initially thought that we only require a
maximum of 24 hours to resolve the logistics issues involved and
complete our deployment for the election. This would mean shifting the
elections to commence on Sunday 17th February 2019. However, given the
restriction of movement during elections, that could affect many votes
who worship on Sundays. While the Commission was considering the
following Monday 18th February 2019 as an option, our LCT Department
advised us that it would require 5 -6 days to reconfigure about 180,000
Smart Card Readers earlier programmed to work only on election day
Saturday 16th February 2019.
It
is for this reason that the Commission decided to adjust the election
dates to Saturday 23rd February 2019 for Presidential and National
Assembly elections and a consequential adjustment of Governorship, State
Assembly and FCT Area Council elections to Saturday 9th March 2019.
Some sensitive materials have been distributed. However, all such
materials have been retrieved and will be taken back to the custody of
the Central Bank of Nigeria. I want to assure you that there will be a
proper audit to account for all materials.
In the next few days, the Commission will work on the basis of the following plan:
S/No. Activity Time-frame
1. Completion/confirmation of deployment Monday 18th February 2019 of materials
2. The configuration of the Smart Card Readers Sunday 17th Thursday, 21st February, 2019
3. Receipt and Deployment of sensitive Wednesday 20 and materials to LGAs Thursday, 21st February, 2019
4. Refresher training for ad-hoc staff Thursday, 21st February, 2019
5. Deployment of personnel to RACs Friday, 22nd of February, 2019
6. Election Day Saturday, 23rd February, 2019.
I want to appeal to Nigerians and all other stakeholders for their
understanding of what has been a very difficult decision for the
Commission. But we believe that ultimately this is for the good of our
democracy and country. I wish to assure you of our commitment to free,
fair and credible elections.
As Chairman of INEC, and on behalf of the Commission, we take full
responsibility for what happened and we regret any inconvenience our
decision might have caused.
Thank you and God bless”.
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