The Independent National Electoral Commission on Wednesday started the distribution of sensitive materials for the presidential and National Assembly elections holding on Saturday.
The Chairman of INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega, confirmed this during the unveiling of the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room in Abuja.
Jega similarly hinted that INEC would push for electronic transmission of results in the 2019 general elections.
In order to avoid a repeat of the 2011 elections where results declared at Collation Centres were at variance with those at Polling Units, Jega said party agents could accompany INEC officials from the Polling Units to the Collation Centre.
According to him: “For long, all our non-sensitive electoral materials had been taken to the local government offices.
“Commencing from today (Wednesday), the sensitive materials will be retrieved from the vault of the Central Bank and taken to our state offices, accompanied by agents of political parties.
“And then, from later this evening (Wednesday) till tomorrow (Thursday) morning, this will be distributed to the various local governments in the states and they will also be accompanied from the state to the local governments by party agents.
“And then, at the state level, we expect that from tomorrow (Thursday) evening until around Friday afternoon, all the materials taken to the local governments will also be distributed to the ward levels.
“At each ward level, we have established what we call Registration Area Centre and we have equipped it reasonably to ensure that both our staff and security agencies spend the few hours of the night there in readiness to deploy very early in the morning to the various Polling Units in each of those wards.”
While disclosing that the same method used in 2011 will also be adopted in announcing the results this year, the INEC Chairman said electronic transmission of results is possible in the 2015 polls.
Jega however assured Nigerians that INEC would improve upon the process of collation of result in this year’s election.
His words: “Although we did a piloting of electronic transmission of results, we piloted it starting from the 2012 governorship elections in Cross River State, even the senatorial by-election which we did in Niger State, we also tested it, but we decided that we will not put that electronic transmission of results to use in the 2015 general elections.
“We can see the reactions from the innovation of using the card reader and we felt that we should just cope with that rather than create additional challenges about electronic transmission of results.
“And we felt that let’s keep piloting it and improving on it beyond 2015 and hopefully by 2019 general elections, the Commission will get there where it can do full electronic transmission of results.”
Jega noted that politicians are opposing the use of card readers because it checkmates alteration of accreditation figures.
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