Polling materials ready, says commissioner
By Akpo Esajere
THE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said yesterday that it would complete movement of electoral materials to the states today.
This is to enable the commission's state offices utilise tomorrow for finalising the distribution of the materials to all the necessary points preparatory to the polls on Saturday.
INEC is ready, according to its National Commissioner for Information, Mr Philip Umeadi (Jnr), who restated to journalists in Lagos yesterday that the commission's preparation for the polls is exhaustive.
"It is the decision of the commission to leave a legacy of good elections. We will reduce rigging to the barest minimum," he said.
Governorship and State Houses of Assembly polls will be held on Saturday. On Saturday next week, it will be the turn of the Presidential and National Assembly polls.
Voting, Umeadi said, would essentially be along the same process as in the past, with voters locating designated polling booths. These are mostly the booths used in past elections.
There, electoral officials will perform accreditation consisting principally of proper identification of the voter using his temporary voter's slip. Both the DCC machine and the old voters' register will be employed.
Umeadi said voter registers had been printed several times "but the problem is that they get mutilated once they are displayed, however, where a voter does not find his name on the register, the DCC machine can also be used to locate it."
The machine has eliminated multiple registration and voting by expunging the names of persons who attempted to get registered more than once.
"The only situation in which a voter does not find his name," said Umeadi, "is if he tried to register more than once. Even where two or more persons had the same name, the machine would have picked them through their fingerprints."
Counting will be done on the spot at the polling unit to determine the candidate's score while results will be announced at collation centres. All results will be transmitted electronically to the centre.
This effectively confines the role of ballot boxes to voting at the polling booth and reduces their movement to the barest minimum - a critical phase exploited by politicians to rig elections in the past.
Ballot papers have been particularised to states. Voting is between 8 a.m and 3p.m.
"The Nicosan train is leaving the station and you had better get on board"
-- Iretiolu Oniyide
"What we see depends mainly on what we look for"
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