Raphael Ede, Enugu
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has described as false the allegation made by the Apex-Igbo cultural organization, Ohanaeze Ndigbo’s that the Commission was short changing South-East states in the ongoing continuous Voters Registration.
INEC National Commissioner, Prof. Ibeanu Okechukwu refuted the allegation while fielding questions from newsmen shortly after commissioning ICT/CVR staff training and crèche at its Enugu State head office, Friday.
Okechukwu said that as a matter of fact, Enugu State was leading in turnout of voters registration that commenced last year, disclosing that the number of registration centres in Enugu was increased from 17 in 2017 to 35 in 2018.
Though he said that INEC has no plan to shortchange any part of Nigeria through her CVR, Okechukwu said that new data capturing machines the Ohanaeze made reference to were shared among the states.
On the position of the commission in the election sequence tangle between the National Assembly and the Presidency, he said that as an umpire body, its role is to implement the law and has no hand in the deadlock on sequence of the 2019 general elections.
The commission also stated that even though it has been piloting on use of electronic voting, using transmission as an instance, it was not sure if it will use electronic voting in 2019 elections.
“The Nigeria Constitution specifies clearly how laws are passed, it starts from the National Assembly and finally the president gives assent to the bill and it becomes law. INEC is not involved in making any law, INEC’s role is to implement the law. So INEC cannot not have a position in the making of a law.
“We did not make a promise that we are going to transmit result from the polling units. INEC, starting from 2015 has been piloting transmission of result, electronically, and we have carried out series of pilots including Anambra State. In some states, we have transmitted from polling units and in some states from the RAs (wards).
“The whole idea in piloting these is to get the most robust framework for electronic transmission of results. So, in principle INEC is committed to electronic transmission of result, but we are looking at the outcome of these pilots right now. If we are satisfied that we have robust framework that we can implement in 2019, then certainly we are going to implement electronic transmission either from the polling units or from the wards, depending on what our pilot tells us,” he explained.
Despite the commission’s uncertainty on the use of electronic voting, Okechukwu said the commission, will still conduct pilot electronic transmission of results in coming governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun states.