No More Polls Shift, INEC Assures Nigerians

The Chairman, Inde­pendent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Attahiru Jega has assured Nigerians that there will not be any further post­ponement of the resched­uled general election. Jega gave the assurance on Wednesday, at an inter­active session with the Civil Society Situation Room, a coalition of over 60 civil society organisations, in Abuja. The INEC Chairman stated that the Commission was fully prepared for the exercise while he disclosed that 11 states have, so far, achieved over 90 per cent Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) collection, because INEC maximised the six-week extension of the polls. “We are now, adequately, prepared for the elections, which have been resched­uled to March 28 and April 11. And I want to say that I’ve not seen any indication from anywhere that there is a desire for another post­ponement of this election. So, we are all focused on March 28 and April 11. “Soon after we an­nounced the rescheduling of the elections, the Com­mission met and decided on how best to utilise this period of extension for six weeks. We decided that the first thing to do was to do a field assessment”, he said.