Electoral Reform: Igini sounds alarm over security implications

By Lawrence Agbo

Mike Igini, former Resident Electoral Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has expressed concern over what he describes as dangerous implications of recently proposed electoral changes, warning that presiding officers could face serious threats at polling units.

Igini stated this while speaking on the development during an interview with ARISE NEWS on Wednesday.

He described the Electoral Act amendment bill as another version of Incident Form.

“The danger of what has been passed is that we are bringing back what they call Incident Form. This is another version of Incident Form because there will be no network.

Speaking further, he narrated how politicians misused the introduction of Card Reader in order to rig election.

“When we introduced Card Reader, we decided to have an application for those who don’t have fingers. We were looking for an all-inclusive electoral process. But you know what happened? Politicians connived with INEC pool staff. That application for only those who don’t have fingers was now used to use Incident Form. The whole community no longer had fingers, and all of that.

Furthermore,he warned that voters should be watchful for election presiding officer who will claim that ther is no network to capture and transfer the results in real -time.

“You see, discretionary power can be abused. The danger of what is going to happen in 2027 is as follows. At the polling units, presiding officers’ lives are going to be in danger because where Nigerians are gathered, results of polling have been announced, everyone could look at his telephone and you could see network. But the presiding officer says that there’s no network. You are going to put the life of that presiding officer in danger.

“Meanwhile, the children of all the political elites are not going to be at the polling unit. It’s the youth corpers that they’re going to be faced with. This is a clear danger. So what they are going to do now is like an Incident Form. Another version of Incident Form, which is for you to sabotage the entire thing.”