Unconfirmed reports coming from the office of the presidency have it that the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Attahiru Jega may receive some stick from the Federal Government over the reason given for the postponement of the general election which have been shifted for six weeks.
According to an official from the office of the presidency who spoke anonymously to The Cable, said Jega had blamed the shift in election dates on the inability of security agencies to provide security during the election period as a result of an ongoing operation against Boko Haram terrorists in the North Eastern part of the country, stating that the INEC chief was “clever by half’ for attempting to shift the blame from his commission over their poor preparation for the polls, which has seen up 23 million Permanent Voter cards (PVCs) undistributed.
He said: “Jega was not sincere at all. The collection of PVCs was to end last Saturday and 23 million cards were yet to be distributed. Why was Jega not man enough to admit they would have bungled the elections if the dates had remained unchanged?
“Jega was also silent on the fact that the machines that would be deployed to read the cards had not been tested and its officials had not even been trained on how to use them, while there is yet no consolidated voter register. Jega himself admitted to his commissioners that the election would have ended in chaos if INEC had gone ahead. The letter written by the chief of defence staff was the perfect excuse for him to shift the polls and heap all the blame on security.”
