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Noah Ebije, Kaduna
Following the rerun elections ordered by the Appeal Court in Kaduna State on the Kagarko and Sanga state Assembly constituencies, the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC), Kaduna State office on Wednesday said it was set for the January 25 election.
Administrative Secretary of the Commission, Muhammed Auwal, gave the assurance at a Stakeholders’ and Election Committee Forum meeting.
According to him, the re-run elections will be conducted in 36 polling units, where a total of 34,315 eligible voters are expected to cast their votes.
He said all non-sensitive materials were already on ground, and the money required to execute the project released, adding that the commission would soon commence the recruitment and training of ad-hoc personnel for the elections.
He explained that only serving corps members would be used in the lower cadre, while INEC staff will be deployed as Supervising Presiding Officers (SPOs) and others.
Auwal, said the commission will use the Smart Card Reader in accreditation, but where there be any issues, the incidence form would be used. It however noted that there are technical experts that will be going round to ensure the system work effectively.
In his reaction, a member of the main opposition political party in the State, People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Ben Bako, said it will amount to a total misplacement if they should believe and accept in a hurry that the commission was prepared owning to what had happened in the past.
According to him, what would happen on the day of the election would be different from what the commission had outlined.
On his part, former senator representing Kaduna North Senatorial Zone, made request on behalf of the PDP, that everyone assigned by should be identified by their names and the entities they represented, and that all sensitive materials assigned to all polling units be numbered and listed clearly.
The Acting Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Yahaya Baba Pate, however, commended INEC for their preparations and requested that the pending result of each of the local governments as declared by the court be made available to all stakeholders.
The INEC Admin Secretary, in his response agreed that there were issues in the 2019 elections but assured that the commission had learnt from them and was ready to make amends, saying “if anything was wrongly done in the past, we promised that it will never happen again.”
