Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission of Nigeria, Mahmoud Yakubu says it will employ a technology that will prevent rigging and ensure that no political party wins an election by a wide margin as was the case in the past.

 Prof. Yakubu who stated this while fielding questions on the ‘Osasu Show’ on Sunday said the Permanent Voter Cards and the smart card readers had been able to tackle rigging, hence the reason for the tightly contested polls in some off-season elections like the Ekiti and Osun governorship polls last year.

His words “Between 2015 and November 2018, we conducted elections into 195 constituencies, the largest number of off-season elections. The turnout varied from a little over 50 per cent in Katsina to as low as 2.9 per cent in Ifako/Ijaye in Lagos and 3.4 per cent in Eti Osa state constituency in Lagos.

“I think the thing to say about turnout is that because elections in Nigeria have progressively and incrementally improved, there is no possibility now that you will have the kind of margins that we used to experience in our elections before the introduction of technology, basically the PVC and the smart card reader.

“The elections in terms of outcome and turnout of votes are becoming more international. You can see the outcomes of the elections are becoming more and more competitive and closer to the kind of results we see even in advanced democracies.”

Yakubu further reinstated the commitment and readiness of the electoral body to conduct a credible, free and fair election which would commence with the presidential poll on February 16.