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Tag: Inec

  • Fire engulfs ICT building at INEC

     

     The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has reported a fire incident at its Information and Communication Technology (ICT) building in Abuja on Monday.

    A statement signed by the Chief Press Secretary to INEC Chairman, Mr Kayode Idowu, said that the incident occurred in the office of the former Director, Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), located in the ICT Building.

    Kayode said that men of the Fire Service attached to the Commission had since put off the fire, adding that the incident did not affect the commission’s facility.

    He also said that an initial assessment had indicated that incident might have resulted from an electrical fault, adding that all the relevant agencies had started investigation into the cause of the fire.

    An eyewitness told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the fire started at about noon, razing the ADR office.

    NAN reports that the commission’s staff members were seen loitering around the building, while a security man was directed to inform Zenith Bank officials occupying a section of the building to evacuate.

    NAN further reports  that the entire floor of the building were water logged as smoke filled the air and the commission’s staff members were evacuated from the building.

    NAN recalls that a similar incident occurred on Jan. 7, razing the office of the commission’s Director of Voter Registry in the same ICT building.

    Similarly, on May 16, 2012 the INEC Electoral Institute went up in flame. (NAN)

  • 73m Nigerians to get INEC’s permanent voter cards

    73m Nigerians to get INEC’s permanent voter cards

    •Cards valid for 10 years

    CHAIRMAN of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Prof. Attahiru Jega, has reiterated the commission’s preparedness to issue 73 million permanent voter cards before the end of this year.

    Prof Jega spoke at the quarterly meeting with the Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) in the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, yesterday.

    He said the commission has gone far with the process.

    The voter cards are to replace the temporary ones issued at the end of the voters’ registration in 2011. The cards are valid for 10 years.

    Last year, the Federal Government approved N2.6 billion for the printing of 40 million out of the 75 million permanent voter cards in the first phase of the project.

    The government has approved additional N33.5 million for the project’s second phase.

    The INEC chair confirmed that the issues dominated talks at the meeting.

    “By the time the contract is executed, all the registered voters will have their permanent voter cards produced. It is our hope that all the cards will be distributed before the end of the year,” he said.

    He listed the security features of the electronic cards as embedded chips with printed voters’ details, photograph barcode, micro-text, hologram and fingerprints.

    Jega said: “The cards will be electronic in nature and will be used for identification, authentication and for voting to prevent multiple voting and frauds.”

    Beside the production of the cards this year, the INEC chief also identified the delimitation of constituencies across the country as the commission’s major project.

    He said: “And most importantly, this year, we plan to carry out the process of delimitation of constituencies, perhaps, most of the important undertakings that we are going to do this year together with the permanent voters cards, and we have gone very far in the preparation for the delimitation.”

     

  • PDP: INEC can’t reject our candidates

    PDP: INEC can’t reject our candidates

    The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday said there is no reason for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to reject its candidates for future elections.

    INEC was quoted to have raised questions on the credibility of the party’s March 2012 national convention that produced the current members of the National Working Committee (NWC).

    A statement by the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, described the report as false and “part of orchestrated media attack on our party”.

    Metuh said: “This report is totally false and is clearly part of the orchestrated media attack on our party, aimed at causing confusion and undermining the psyche of our members.

    “Our investigations revealed that the said report did not in any way emanate from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) or any of its officials.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • INEC to issue permanent voters’ card before year end -Jega

    INEC to issue permanent voters’ card before year end -Jega

    The Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, said the commission would issue the 10-year permanent voters’ cards to registered voters before the end of 2013.

    Speaking on Monday in Abuja at the commission’s quarterly meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs), Jega said that INEC had gone far in the production of the first phase of the cards.

    “By the time the contract is executed, all the registered voters will have their permanent voters’ card produced.

    “It is our hope that all the cards will be distributed before the end of the year,” Jega said.

    He said the cards contained security features such as embedded chips with printed voters’ details, photograph barcode, micro-text, hologram and fingerprints.

    “The cards will be electronic in nature and will be used for identification, authentication and for voting to prevent multiple voting and frauds,” he said.

    The INEC boss said the meeting would discuss the issue of permanent voters’ cards, their production, distribution and security.

    He also said that the meeting would discuss the delineation of electoral constituencies and progress made toward 2015 general elections, among others.

    The News Agency of Nigeria recalls that in 2012, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved N2.6 billion for the printing of first phase of 40 million out of the 75 million permanent voters’ cards needed in the country for future general elections.

    There are 73.5 million temporary voters’ cards awaiting replacement.

     

  • INEC prepares for 2015 with 18 directors

    INEC prepares for 2015 with 18 directors

    With the appointment of 18 directors, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is getting set for the 2015 elections.

    The newly appointed directors are Ngaladar Shettima( Borno)-Security Directorate; Arabambi A.D.(Osun)-Voter Education, Public Relations and Gender; Mrs. S.G. Ibrahim (Gombe)-Finance and Account; F.E. Tobi (Delta)-Audit; Moses Udoh (Akwa Ibom)-Estate, Works and Transport; U.F. Usman (Kebbi)-Administration; Isa Lawal (Plateau)-Procurement; Ismaila Mayi Kaura (Zamfara) – Stores Directorate; and Bala Shittu (Kaduna)-Election and Party Monitoring.

    Others are: Chidi Nwafor( Anambra) – ICT; Okey Ndeche Okechukwu (Anambra) – Planning and Monitoring; Akem Emmanuel (Benue) – Voter Registry; Irene Ngozi Oghuma(Delta)-Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR); Isiaku A. Gali (Yobe) – Commission’s Secretariat; Oladimeji Kayode O.(Lagos) -Electoral Operations; Ogakwu C. Augusta (Anambra) – Legal Services; Osaze O. Uzzi(Edo) – (International Cooperation and Protocol) and Musa Hamidu Adamu(Bauchi) HRM Directorate.

    The appointments were based on merit and the federal character principle to reduce geopolitical and ethnic politics, which could distract the commission from conducting free and fair elections, it was learnt.

    Also, some directors, who were involved in past controversial polls in some states in 2007 have been redeployed.

    INEC Chairman Attahiru Jega decided to reshuffle the 67 directors he inherited from his predecessors to conduct credible elections in 2015.

    It was gathered that after a comprehensive professional auditing by Jega and all the National Commissioners, 18 of the 67 directors were found fit for the vision of the new INEC administration.

    The other 39 directors will be administrative secretaries in all the 36 states and the FCT or at the Electoral Institute of the commission.

    A source close to the reorganisation said: “The restructuring was borne out of the need to make the commission more effective to be able to deliver free, fair and credible elections.

    “If you remember, the INEC chairman has always said the vision of this leadership is to make the commission the best electoral management body in Africa. This is part of the measures being put in place achieving that.”

    Responding to a question, the source added: “There is spread, everybody is taken care of.

    “The exercise is based strictly on merit while also bing mindful of the Federal Character Principle. It has been carried out for the commission to be neatly streamlined. No more overlap of functions, no more duplication.”

  • INEC retires 20 Directors in major shakeup

    INEC retires 20 Directors in major shakeup

    Six out of the 26 Directors in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) headquarters survived the ongoing shakeup in the commission

    A dependable source at the INEC headquarters told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday that the commission had 67 directors nationwide

    The source said that the affected directors were either retired or redeployed and assigned to lower offices,

    The source pointed out that the exercise was aimed at re-positioning the commission to meet the emerging challenges.

    According to the source, some of the affected directors with two years left in service are advised to retire with full entitlements or be redeployed to lower offices.

    The source said some of the directors accepted the options while some rejected it and threatened court action.

    Meanwhile, April 12, has been slated as the handing over date, the source said.

  • INEC shake-up unsettles workers

    INEC shake-up unsettles workers

    A Major reorganisation of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has unsettled its workers.

    The shake-up, it was learnt, followed the recommendations of PriceWaterCooper, the consultancy firm hired by INEC.

    In its report, the firm observed among other things that the Commission has bloated workforce.

    The restructuring, which might not be unconnected with the 2015 general elections, has so far seen the redeployment, transfer and retirement of some of the 67 directors.

    It was learnt that the shake-up has reduced INEC’s departments to nine from 26 and its directorates trimmed to 10.

    Besides, directors who have less than two years left in service were asked to consider the voluntary retirement option.

    Confirming the development, the Chief Press Secretary to INEC chairman, Mr Kayode Idowu, said that by reducing the departments, the commission now has fewer departments to be headed by efficient hands.

    According to Mr Idowu, the merged departments include: the civil society; gender; voter education; and public affairs. He said they were rolled into the department of voter education, public relations and civil society.

    He also spoke of a plan to reconfigure the departments’ leadership because the commission has many directors in the system, pointing out that a lot of options are on the table for them.

    Mr. Idowu also said the new departments would be headed by directors with directorates under them.

    He said the commission can no longer retain all the directors presently on its payroll, even as he assured that no officer would be shortchanged in the ongoing reorganisation.

    The reduction in workforce notwithstanding, Idowu argued the commission required strong workforce due to its scope of work across the country.

    Justifying the need for more hands, he informed that the continuous voters’ registration in the country’s 8,809 wards will soon begin.

    Argu that the commission’s workforce was inadequate, Idowu said: “If you are looking at the number of wards, everybody at INEC will be fully utilised.”

    He said when the commission did the recruitment exercise in 2012, only 1,500 people were recruited, explaining that nd to do the exercise there was need to deploy more workforces across the country.

  • What is Professor Jega up to at INEC?

    What is Professor Jega up to at INEC?

    President Jonathan has to step into the ups-manship in INEC

    With the fresh petition delivered to the Chairman, Senate Committee on INEC, by employees of INEC on January 7, 2013, it would appear that matters are far worse today than they were when the article below, mildly edited, was published on 12 September, 2012. Like it or not, President Jonathan would now have to find a way of stepping into the ups-man-ship going in that agency because of its possible negative consequences on the 2015 general elections.It is now in the open why Jega wanted to be all-in-all as he recently requested of the government. Happy reading.

    What game is the North up to at INEC?

    Can Professor Jega, a celebrated academic and former University Vice-Chancellor, double as an ethnic bigot? Is the famous Professor Oba, former Vice Chancellor, University of Ilorin, working in tandem with Jega in the former’s usual role of a Northern irredentist? Or is it as simple as the Federal Character Commission becoming comatose and toothless wherever in the Nigerian polity the North wields an unfair advantage? These and more questions agitate the mind on reading the advert: THE TAKE OVER OF INEC published in the Monday, 20 August, 2012, edition of this newspaper by the ELECTION INTEGRITY NETWORK but which in itself emanated from an earlier story by TheNews Magazine. It will be a little disingenuous, even unfair, to claim or even pretend that

    INEC has just so suddenly become a Northern enclave. The story has always been the same since there is literally a Northern Executive Secretary, permanently in place, but with the addition of Jega as Chairman, cronyism and outright nepotism have assumed an industrial scale with Oba’s FCC’s ludicrous connivance.

    For ease of reference, let us quote directly from the advert under reference. According to the publication, INEC’s top management is made up as follows:

    1. Prof Jega (Chairman)- Kebbi 2. U.F Usman (Director of Logistics) -Kebbi

    3. A. Muktar (Director of Human Resources) -Sokoto

    4. A.A Uregi (Director of Finance) – Niger

    5. M. Kuta (Internal Auditor) -Niger 6. E.T Akem (Director ICT) -Benue

    7. I. Biu (Director of Voter Education) – North East

    8. I.K Bawa (Dep. Director, Legal) – Plateau

    9. Okey Ndeche (Director,

    Operations) -Anambra

    10. Nyise Torgba (Director M& E/ Performance) -Benue

    11. A.A Adamu Head, Commission, Secretariat) -Kogi

    12. M.Ekwunja (Director,

    Civil Societies)

    13. E. Umenger (Director, Public

    Affairs) -Benue

    14. Regina Omo-Agege (Director, Political Monitoring) -Delta.

    15. B.E Edoghotu (Estate & Works).

    Those heading its key committees are also quite revealing. They are:

    1. Col. Hamanga ( Chairperson, Logistics Committee) -Adamawa

    2. Dr Nuru Yakubu ( Chairperson, Operations Committee) -Yobe

    3. Ambassador Wali (Chair person, Procurement Committee) -Sokoto

    4. Prof Jega (Chairperson, F&GP) -Kebbi

    5. Prof Jega ( Chairperson, ICT) -Kebbi

    6. Hajia Amina Zakari (Chairperson, Political Monitoring) -Jigawa

    7. Membership of its 9-Man Strategic Planning Committee reads as follows: Nuru A. Yakubu, Istianus Dalwang, Mustafa Kuta, M.S Mohammed. Torgba Nyitse, Emanuel Akeem all from the North with the exception of the duo of Mike Igini and Okechukwu Ndeche from the South. Add to this, the Executive Secretary who is from the same geo-political zone with Jega and, who, by the way has long passed the official retiring age. How blatant can some supposedly educated people get?

    It’s impossible not to wonder how an otherwise accomplished academic conveniently overlook the fact that Nigeria has a a Federal Character prescription in its constitution. What will Jega claim as alibi for this totally unacceptable lop-lopsidedness in an agency that is so critical?

    I found the following comments by Ifeanyi Izeze very useful in taking a look at the Federal Character Commission. Wrote Izeze in 2011 : ” When Nigeria’s Federal Character Commission (FCC) was established in 1996, it was supposed to enforce the federal character principles which aimed at ensuring fair and equitable distribution of posts; social-economic amenities; and infrastruc-tural facilities among the federating units of the nation. The intention was for it to be the watchdog of government ministries, departments and agencies to ensure an evenly distributed workforce that reflects ethnic diversity and the geopolitical divides of the country’.

    In recognition of its failings, wrote Izeze, the Commission after a Port Harcourt stakeholders retreat recounted as follows: ‘The FCC has delineated the country into national, state and local government levels as channels of distribution among the federating units for ease of implementation. Allocations at the national level, it said, will now be based on the 36 states and Abuja or the six geo-political zones or north and south …’ Apparently under Professor Oba, all these have been thrown into the trash can such that today, the North can completely dominate INEC with literally all its consultants coming from the North with nary a voice of warning from the Federal Character Commission.

    Given Professor Oba’s history as Vice-Chancellor, University of Ilorin, I am not in the least surprised that under his leadership, the Federal Character Commission has decided not know that INEC exists within the country’s laws.

    It is here that one begins to suspect a collusion with the PDP Federal government, given the ringing silence from the office of the Secretary to Government of the Federation. Not even a single warning to that office for its total ineffectiveness nor to Jega for the nauseating ethnic domination in INEC. Add to this, Jega’s clandestine decision to now use permanent voter’s cards for the next election, which cards will be obtained in the most dubious of ways as it will permit the registration of, not only minors, but totally non-existent persons, just so INEC can unilaterally swell registration figures in some given areas.

    I doubt if Jega’s defenders know what incalculable damage they do to his reputation when, in mitigation, they claim that he met everything in place. If in all these years he cannot right the obvious wrongs then he certainly does not deserve all the adulation he got at his appointment by a man who, we now know, truly did not know him at all.

    What then are the probable calculations? The Election Integrity Network is of the view that the structural iniquity in INEC epitomises nothing but a skewed regional interest especially at a time when geo-political struggle for power has assumed a violent dimension. The body believes that this is a carefully planned restructuring in which the most important organs responsible for future elections are placed smack in the hands of the North.

    The only time in recent memory that I can recall a similar scenario was during the Abacha era when you could hardly find four Southerners on the list of the topmost twenty security officials and a security council meeting could hold with no southerner, whatever, in attendance, if you go strictly by rank.

    Without a doubt, this arrangement at INEC cannot be a happenstance; rather it is the result of cold calculations aimed at the next elections. Nothing, for instance, stops some of Jega’s Northern top men in INEC from being transferred to other sections of the service as long as they do not lose their seniority. But nobody will dare.

    The sponsors of the advert in question bemoaned the fate of the Southwest in the agency.

    For me personally, this is a non-issue since it is a failure of the Yorubas in the PDP who are obviously not treated as equals as was recently eloquently demonstrated by Chairman Tukur who unilaterally sent its Yoruba Secretary packing. If these people now traversing the South-West ahead of the next elections were treated as co-equals, having lost the Speaker-ship of the House, they should have since ensured that they are adequately represented in agencies like INEC. This, however, will never happen since they are keener at feathering their individual nests as opposed to corporate South-West interests.

    As things stand in INEC today, Mr President owes it a duty to Nigeria to clear up, the Augean stable as a stitch in time could more than save nine.

  • ‘We didn’t pay INEC N4m to revise register’

    The Edo State Independent Electoral Commission (EDSIEC) has denied paying N4million to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the revision of the voters’ register.

    EDSIEC Chairman Solomon Ogoh, who described the reports as fictitious and false, said INEC did not demand money before releasing the voters’ register for the April 20 local government elections.

    Solomon said what was published was politicians’ reaction and not from the electoral body.

    He said: “EDSIEC and INEC are brothers and we are still operating as brothers and even as we are now, INEC is going to train our staff for the election.

    “Certain things which they have and we don’t have, they are going to give to us to conduct our election.

    “Since our inception, we have had a harmonious working relationship with INEC and the various parties.

    “We don’t belong to any party. I don’t belong to any party and my colleagues don’t belong to any party. So we are all working as a very big family.

    “So, if there are occasions of very minor misunderstanding, we solve them on our own, so, there is nothing that connects us with political disagreement or confrontation. None exists.”

     

  • ‘INEC, under legal duty to register APC’

    As the intrigues surrounding the registration of the mega party, All Progressives Congress (APC), continue, a legal expert, Dr Sonny Ajala, has warned that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is under legal duty to register the party as quickly as possible.

    Ajala gave the advise even as a member of the Board of Trustees of All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP), Dr. Francis Egu, said there are no obstacles on the way of APC.

    Assessing the issues that have manifested in the registration saga in an interview with The Nation, Ajala said, “The tussle to appropriate the acronym APC is consistent with the nature, antics and intrigues of the inherent struggle in politics to control, dominate and perhaps undermine the efforts of the opponent. For INEC as a statutory body, they have the enviable option to isolate the politics of name/acronym appropriation from clear legal requirement for registration of a political association. Once INEC discharges that statutory duty, which I have no doubt they will do creditably, the intrigues and subterfuge to appropriate the acronym ‘APC’ will be laid to rest.

    “In other words, INEC is under a legal duty to register the political association that first satisfies the requirements of the extant Electoral Act for the registration of a political association.”

    Reacting to the registration saga, Dr Egu, told The Nation that currently, the progressives have no reason to fear that the merger party, APC, would not be registered. “There is no obstacle on our way. We have no reason to panic because we have satisfied all the requirements. That being the case, INEC can not deny us registration.”

    Asked if the mega party has any alternative arrangement if INEC eventually insists on change of name, Egu, who refused to spell out the alternative option open to the party, said, “Of course, there is always a plan B in any reasonable plan. But in this case, and for now, we are certain to be registered because we have satisfied the requirements.”