The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said the number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) that would vote are enough to meet the legal requirement and consequently return candidates as elected. The commission’s chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega made the remark yesterday in Abuja at the stakeholders summit on the voting rights of IDPs in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states who are displaced as a result of the insurgency that renders their local government areas inaccessible. He said that only IDPs at the established camps as well as those in host communities in the three troubled states would be entitled to cast their votes at the designated centres and are sizable enough to return candidates as elected representatives. Governors of Borno, Kashim Shettima; that of Adamawa, Bala James Ngilari and the deputy governor of Yobe, Abubakar Ali; members of the National Assembly from the affected states, committee chairmen on INEC from both Senate and House of Representatives, security agencies and a host of other stakeholders eventually endorsed the plans rolled out by INEC to cater for the IDPs voting in the general elections. The INEC chairman said it is unrealistic for the commission to cater for all the displaced around the country and other neighboring countries. He said plans were only made to the estimated range of 981,000 to 1,000 000 IDPs across the three states. Jega, while responding to a question by a House of Representative member, Rep Kyari Gujbawu (Borno) over the seeming difficulty to have a sizable number of registered voters during the election, said low level participation could not affect the return of a candidate if other legal requirements were recorded by the candidate in the election. “If you registered like 100,000 people who are registered voters, but only 10, 000 people came out to vote, you can say there is low level participation for any reason but does not affect declaring the winner. The most important thing is to afford people opportunities so that as many people as possible would come out and vote. “The issue of return, I think, it is very clear. For you to be able to make a return, as a governor, you must have the highest number of the votes cast and then, secondly, you must as well have a spread of 25 percent of the votes in the 2/3 of the local governments, he said. Contributing, Adamawa State Governor, Bala Ngilari said there are presently seven local governments in his state that are under threat of insurgents, saying conducting elections in such areas would practically be impossible in February. Ngilari called on INEC to consider shifting the election to April when normalcy would have returned to the areas, as he said it would amount to “height of insensitivity” to conduct elections when people’s lives are at risk. But even before the governor concluded his remarks, there was opposition to the demand. Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima commended INEC for pragmatism and show of commitment stressing the need to disregard political, religious and ethnic sentiment in the approach to the scourge of terrorism in the region. Responding to a question by Senate committee chairman on INEC, Senator Andy Uba on the fate of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Abuja, Prof. Jega said the usage of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) in the general elections remains sacrosanct if the credibility of the elections to be improved. He said the calls to revert to the usage of temporary voter cards for the election would create more problems than going ahead with the planned PVCs usage by the electoral body. The chairman said the use of PVCs became imperative since the commission has already bought card readers as a way of eliminating rigging and other electoral irregularities that previously gave INEC serious headaches.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 08:21:24 +0000
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