An INEC Commissioner, Prof. Lai Olorode, says the commission has now taken delivery of almost half of the 40 million permanent voters\u2019 cards, awaiting the balance to be delivered in the next few weeks.<\/p>\n
He made this known in an interview with reporters on Monday in Abuja.<\/p>\n
According to Olorode, the distribution of the voters\u2019 cards will commence as soon as the commission takes the delivery of the remaining consignment.<\/p>\n
NAN recalls that in 2012, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved N2.6 billion for the printing of first batch of 40 million cards out of the 75 million permanent voters\u2019 cards needed in the country for general elections.<\/p>\n
Olorode said that all the logistics for the distribution had been worked out by the commission, pointing out that \u201cas the commission is giving out the permanent card, the temporary one will be withdrawn\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said the commission had commenced a clean up exercise as well as consolidated the data on the 73.5 million voters already\u00a0 registered to eliminate cases of duplication or multiple registration.<\/p>\n
The commissioner said that recently, some staff were recruited and would be engaged in the distribution of the cards.<\/p>\n
Olorode said that contingency plans had been made for those who would not be able to receive their permanent cards during the exercise.<\/p>\n
He said that ward officers would also commence house to house campaign on what to do and steps to be taken during the distribution.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe commission has put in place various logistics to ensure the security of the cards because we don\u2019t want them to get into wrong hands or the politicians to hijack the exercise.<\/p>\n
Olorode said that based on past experience and investigations, the commission was this time, giving out more secured, fraud-proof, chip-based and biometric data proof card in order to check the electoral manipulation.<\/p>\n
He also said that the commission has got approval from the National Economic Council (NEC) to sell 78,000 units of laptops to\u00a0 interested state governments.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese were part of the 130,000 laptop components of Direct Data Capture (DDC) bought for the 2010 voter registration exercise.<\/p>\n
\u201cINEC did not just wake up one day and decided that the computers should be sold.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring the 2010 voter registration, more than 130,000 DDC were bought and after the election the technological revolution has rendered the machine irrelevant and outdated. So, instead of keeping them to rust away, INEC has decided to recycle them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Olorode explained that a few of the computers had been selected for the continuous voter registration exercise, while some were reserved to strengthen the ICT capacity for training and other activities.<\/p>\n
He said the idea has been sold to the state governments to have them for their schools and other educational institutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has become very imperative for the state governments because the computer literacy in the country is still very low, and buying the computers will be of great assistance.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the sale would commence as soon as the commission began to receive responses from the state governments.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe intention of the commission is not motivated by profit, the whole idea is to enhance computer literacy among Nigerians.\u201d\u00a0 (NAN)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An INEC Commissioner, Prof. Lai Olorode, says the commission has now taken delivery of almost half of the 40 million permanent voters\u2019 cards, awaiting the balance to be delivered in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n