The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has insisted that Saturday’s presidential elections in Nigeria will not be shifted despite recent fire incidents which destroyed several Smart Card Reader Machines originally configured for the polls.

The electoral body expressed its readiness to conduct the most credible elections in the history of the country during the unveiling of a central election monitoring hub for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) located at the Transcorp Hilton in Abuja.

Speaking at the event, INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu who was represented by one of his National Commissioners, Mr. Festus Okoye noted that fire outbreaks that gutted election materials in three of its offices across the federation constituted a set-back to its earlier arrangements for a smooth conduct of the 2019 polls. 

INEC insisted that the set-back was not such that could significantly affect the election process, adding that the Commission had since made alternative plans to replace over 4, 695 Card Readers destroyed at INEC’s warehouse in Anambra State on Tuesday. 

“INEC will be open and transparent throughout the entire election process. We are going to be upfront with information relating to our processes and our procedures,” Okoye said. 

“Where ever we have challenges, we are going to be honest with the Nigerian people relating to our challenges. 

“In relation to this particular election, we had some challenges yesterday (Tuesday) but we were able to recover, and as I speak, we are moving all the Smart Card Readers required for the conduct of elections in Anambra State and we are not going to postpone the election in any part of Nigeria on grounds of some of these challenges.

“As some of you are aware, this election will be conducted in over 120, 000 polling units and we also have over 50, 000 voting points. The voting points were created to ease the process of voting especially for the Nigerian people.

“We have over 91 political parties that are registered in Nigeria and 73 of these political parties sponsored candidates for the presidential election.

“The process of collating the results manually will be issued out and INEC had decided that one Collation Officer per registration area cannot do the job and do it effectively and do it in such a way that the anxiety of the Nigerian people relating to who will be their next president will be addressed on time. 

“Based on that, INEC has recruited two Collation Officers for each registration area and two collation officers for the 774 Local Government Areas.

“So, the Collation Officer for the presidential election is different. The Collation Officer will collate and proceed.

“The presidential election will move from the registration area to the local governments and then to the state before it gets to the Federal Capital Territory to the national collation center. 

“While the Collation Officer for the Senatorial and the House of Representative elections will move and stop at a certain point where declaration will be made.

“In order for us not to keep the Nigerian people waiting for too long, we are going to have two Collation Officers in the 8,809 registration areas and two Collation Officers for the 774 LGAs in the country for the purposes of the first election,” Okoye said.