Aliyu to INEC: Shelve permanent voter cards for 2015

Governor Aliyu himself announced this during his budget presentation to the state House of Assembly in Minna yesterday.He said, “As I speak to you, myself, former military president Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida and General Abdulsalami Abubakar have not collected our voter cards.”The governor said majority of eligible voters may not vote in the general election, and […]

Governor Aliyu himself announced this during his budget presentation to the state House of Assembly in Minna yesterday.
He said, “As I speak to you, myself, former military president Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida and General Abdulsalami Abubakar have not collected our voter cards.”
The governor said majority of eligible voters may not vote in the general election, and that INEC should consider allowing all eligible voters with temporary voter cards to vote so that no one would be disenfranchised.
The electoral body however said the governor and the two former leaders would get their cards by next week.
Aliyu had said that the permanent voter cards were sent for only 11 of the 25 local government areas of the state.
Even at that, he said, not more than 12 eligible voters out of 500 received their cards in most of the polling units where the distribution took place.
He added that in most of the collection centres the machines brought for the exercise did not function well and in some instances INEC officials abandoned their duty posts.
He called on INEC to wake up to its responsibility and correct the anomaly.
Reacting, INEC chairman’s spokesperson, Kayode Idowu, told Daily Trust on telephone that the commission was aware of the non-availability of the cards in some of the state’s local governments and had duly notified the people.
“You see the issue of the exclusion of local governments is a matter of strategy necessitated by the availability of the cards. We did it in Lagos and at the end of the day we went round all the local governments in Lagos. First, we did 11 local governments and later we did nine local governments. That was what we did in Lagos.
“Now in Niger State, we did not have the cards in all local governments.  So we are going ahead with the ones we have, as soon as cards for the remaining local governments are ready they would get them, just like we did in Lagos.  We notified Niger people that some local governments’ cards would not be ready. We did it absolutely,” he said.
Asked whether it was a coincidence that the governor and two former heads of state are yet to get their cards, Idowu said, “…the personalities you are talking are possibly from one local government and if that particular local government is affected, that means these individuals would also be affected.
“Am sure as we speak, it is possible the cards are here. And if they are not here, by next week they would have their cards.”
On the complaint by the governor that INEC officials have had to abandon their duty posts over failure of machines, he said, “I do not know about INEC staff that abandoned their posts. But what I can tell you about failure of machines is what we have been saying before. We have not pretended about the machines. These machines are not new. We bought these machines in 2010 for the 2011 voter’s registration. The computers that you bought in 2010 would not be functioning optimally, like they were in 2011. And it doesn’t make sense to ask for budget to buy machines.”
When asked over the possibility of shelving plan to use the PVCs and card readers for the 2015 elections owing to the myriads of challenges in states, he said INEC is on course for the use of PVCs and card readers during the elections.
 “We are absolutely confident the PVCs would be used in 2015. We would use the card readers along with the permanent voter’s cards in 2015.”
“I can give you guarantee that it would be used. What are the challenges? It is the distribution and we are working, we are doing everything possible to distribute.
The distribution of the cards had been marked by chaos ever since it started months ago.
In Lagos it even led to street protests by residents who feared that the unavailability of the cards in many centres may disenfranchise them.
The Lagos state government also mounted a vigorous campaign against INEC over non availability of the cards and the slow nature of the distribution exercise against four day limit set for the exercise.
Similar protests were also staged in other states including Kaduna and Kano.