Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Prof. Attahiru Jega yesterday said the commission had received 43 million permanent voters’ registration cards out of the 73.5 million required.
He told reporters in Abuja that the commission was waiting to receive substantial cards before beginning distribution.
In 2012, the Federal Executive Council approved N2.6 billion for the printing of 40 million of the 75 million cards needed for the general elections.
Jega said the commission would start issuing the 10-year permanent cards to registered voters before December.
He said: “You know Nigerians; when INEC distributes cards to some states and others are not given, there will be political interpretations to it. We are putting mechanisms in place to ensure effective distribution.
“INEC has learnt from its past mistakes. We do not want a situation where the cards would be dumped somewhere else without getting to eligible voters.
“This time, INEC will distribute the cards at the same time nationwide to prevent complaints. We will go back to the polling units to ensure that all registered voters in each unit collect their cards there.
“INEC will be very meticulous about the distribution. As at today, there are 73.5 million temporary voters’ cards awaiting replacement.”
Jega stressed that the 2015 polls would be much better than previous ones, saying: “I assure you that INEC will continuously improve on the transparency and credibility of the electoral process. I assure Nigerians that the 2015 elections will be remarkably much better.”
He said the new cards have 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 used for identification, authentication and voting to prevent multiple voting and fraud,” Jega added.
Also yesterday, Jega said local and foreign election observers would be responsible for their security.
Speaking at a workshop on “Election Observation Outside Nigeria; Lessons Learnt”, he said INEC would only engage security agencies to ensure security during the elections.
Apart from Venezuela where the state prescribes areas where observers should visit, Jega said that there was no country where the electoral commission or the state provides security for observers.
He said: “What we do in Nigeria is to liaise with security agencies to provide security for the conduct of the elections. Observers can make their own security arrangements.
“We even have countries like India that do not allow anybody to observe their elections. However, we accept that the presence of foreign observers will add credibility to the outcome of the elections.”
To ensure free, fair and credible elections in 2015, Jega said INEC’s leadership and workers had visited about 16 countries for peer review and now know the importance of planning ahead for the conduct of elections.
He said Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has helped many countries, especially the developed ones, to ensure credible polls, adding that politicians in those countries do not take elections as a must win like most African politicians.
Jega said: “Technology has helped to remove some logistics problems, but the use of technology in Nigeria would be difficult in the collation of results, so as to avoid what happened in Kenya, where a lot of crisis ensued because of that. In matured democracies, even ordinary A4 paper is used as ballot paper and nothing happens.”
Also yesterday, Bayelsa State Resident Commissioner (REC) Edwin Nwatalari said the commission would use electronic accreditation for voters in 2015.
Nwatalari spoke in Yenagoa, the state capital, while presenting the commission’s strategic plan for 2012 to 2015 at a stakeholders’ meeting.
He said the commission had concluded arrangements to begin a pilot test of the schemes in some states, where governorship elections had been scheduled for 2014.
Nwatalari said: “Although we cannot do electronic voting, we will do electronic accreditation.”
