Postponement shows our commitment to credible polls —Jega

The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, spoke with journalists after announcing the postponement of the National Assembly election on Saturday. John Alechenu was there. Excerpts: What assurance is INEC giving Nigerians that we won’t have a repeat of this on Saturday? I want to assure you that all the materials are now in the country. In fact, some have already been distributed to the states, it is just that there was no sufficient time for them to reach the polling units before accreditation and the commencement of the process of voting. We will ensure that all the materials reach all the polling units so that we will be able to conduct the elections with all the materials in the field without problems. Who is responsible for this lapse and what measure will be taken against the person(s)? Who is responsible? Unfortunately, we have been disappointed by a vendor. A vendor was supposed to deliver these materials latest by Thursday afternoon and we were confident with the assurance we had that once these materials were delivered, we had sufficient time to deliver them to the field. Obviously, they did not deliver on Thursday, they gave us excuses that there is a problem in Japan and many of the Boeing 747s were being diverted for relief materials to Qatar and Libya. They claimed that that affected some of the agreements they had for transportation. They now assured us that the materials would arrive by 5:30pm on Friday, and by the assurances they gave us we thought as honourable men that would stand and we were fully mobilised, we got the Nigeria Air Force to lay aircraft. As I speak with you, over ten aircraft are at the airport ready to distribute the materials to the polling units. And we were confident that if they were on ground by 5:30pm, we would have done that. Unfortunately they did not arrive at 5:30, we were told 2:00am, eventually the materials only arrived Lagos at 9:00am. You can see that even though the Air Force planes are there to distribute these materials there is no way that all of these materials, would have been distributed before the end of the accreditation exercise, that is the situation we find ourselves. We’ve done our best, we’ve tried everything possible, and we’ve been disappointed, nobody likes it. We apologise to Nigerians for what has happened; I take responsibility for it because it is a major lapse, there was nothing we could have done to prevent this from happening. But the materials are now in the country. As I speak with you, they are being taken to the states. As I said, some have already arrived the states and we believe that we have sufficient time to be able to ensure that everything is deployed for the elections to take place. How many states did not receive these sensitive materials? Obviously, the lack of materials affected most states. First of all, it covered all of the North East and the North Central geo-political zones. Senatorial ballot papers for these zones were supposed to be delivered by the same vendor and they were in the same aircraft which came late. Some of these states were affected by the non-delivery of the senatorial ballot papers but we could have gone ahead if that was the only thing, we could have isolated senatorial elections, and proceeded with the House of Representatives elections but we couldn’t do that because there were no result sheets. That’s why I say the fundamental problem is the late arrival of result sheets. We consider it to be a terrible, unfortunate emergency and unfortunately there is nothing we can do about it, I apologise to Nigerians and I take responsibility for that. How many states don’t have the result sheets? With regards to how many states don’t have the sheets, virtually all the states except those I have mentioned earlier. Even in these states, there were a few areas where these sheets were not available. In the distribution, we made sure that all the vendors supplied result sheets to all the states. It was to avoid a situation where materials arrive in particular areas and it won’t arrive in another area. Unfortunately this has now happened; most of the states have been affected. Are you saying that Nigeria is incapable of conducting credible elections? This is far from the truth, what we are doing now is that in spite of all these, in spite of the difficulties and the weighty announcement we have just made, we are committed to free, fair and credible elections. We cannot proceed with these elections if we want them to be free, fair and credible; we can’t do that if there are no result sheets. What we are doing is that our commitment to credible elections is actually satisfied. That’s why we are doing this. We cannot bury our heads and say there are no problems and ask people to continue with the electoral process when we know that the results will not be properly tabulated, properly printed and secure. It is regrettable, it is unfortunate, it should not have happened. Under normal circumstances, these kinds of things don’t happen and it is really unfortunate that it has happened but what can we do? Man proposes, God disposes. We’ve done our best under the circumstances that does not mean we are excusing ourselves from blame. We take the blame, we take the responsibility, it comes with the job. Once again I apologise. We cannot avoid taking the bitter pill when it becomes necessary to do so because we are committed to having free and fair elections By John Alechenu Courtesy Of: Punch