Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor
Mahmood Yakubu, has said that INEC planned to further enhance the
electoral process by introducing more technology in the collation and
transmission of election results in order to make the process speedy, more
accurate and technology-driven.
He said the contribution of technology in the 2015 general elections,
adjudged as the best in the history of Nigeria, could not be over
emphasized, hence the Commission was poised to consolidate on its
technological gains.
The INEC Chairman made the disclosure yesterday at the quarterly
Commission meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs), at the
Commission’s headquarters, Abuja.
“This Commission will not experiment. It will rather consolidate.
Technology has come to stay. Not only will the Permanent Voter Cards
(PVCs) and the Smart Card Readers remain, but we are going to go a step
higher to see if we can also deploy technology for collation and
transmission of results so that we make the processes between the
conclusion of elections at the Polling Units, the counting and final tally
at the Collation Centre speedy and more accurate and technology driven,”
he disclosed.
He explained that the Commission was saddled with the responsibility of
conducting about 82 Court ordered elections within the first quarter of
2016. Professor Mahmood implored the RECs to work with the Commission in
ensuring that it delivered on its core mandate of conducting free, fair
and credible elections.
Said he: “we need to put our hands together with RECs and other
stakeholders to see how we respond immediately to the decisions of the
courts to conduct these elections because we have a maximum of 90 days
within which to do so”.
The INEC Chairman further explained that apart from the 82 annulled
elections, the Appeal Court had as at last week upturned 15 elections and
ordered INEC to issue Certificates of Return to the rightful winners, to
which he said the Commission had compiled.
Some of the issues discussed at the meeting include: Continuous Voter
Registration (CVR), elections conducted so far by the Commission under
Professor Yakubu’s watch, the Smart Card Reader, violence in elections,
undistributed PVCs and staff welfare.