The Independent National Electoral Commission in Nigeria has said that it is investigating the several issues trailing the Anambra governorship election, blaming some voters for the omission of their names in the voters register.
Speaking on Channels Television’s breakfast programme, Sunrise Daily, the spokesman for the commission, Mr. Kayode Idowu, addressed several issues which sprung up during the election that has been touted as a test run for the 2015 general elections.
Despite efforts by the electoral umpire to conduct a free and fair, widely accepted election, there were many hiccups in the process. Mr Idowu admitted that the fact that a supplementary election would be conducted was evidence that the election was flawed.
He, however, condemned people making ‘sweeping generalisations’ concerning the elections.
Mr Idowu, who is the the Press Secretary to the commission’s chairman, Attahiru Jega, said that INEC had made efforts to conduct an election that would surpass all other elections it had conducted in the past but there were challenges in logistics and the voters register.
Commenting on the issue of missing names in the voters register, he said that investigations by the Commission revealed that in most cases people did not go to confirm their details when the Claims and Objections’ register was displayed few days to the election date on November 16.
“The law requires that people should go to verify their status and names during display and there were issues. They had the opportunity to raise it and the Commission will make adjustments.”
The register had also been given to the political parties 30 days before the elections.
“Three days before the election, that same register with a slight adjustment was given to them,” he said, adding that, the Commission had also presented the option for voters to confirm their status by sending a text message to a phone number.
He added that some of the voters whose names were missing were actually not in the biometric register, while some were on the addendum register.
Although INEC Chairman had announced that only the electronic voters register would be used during the election, Mr Idowu explained that the addendum register (which is manual) was used during the 2011 voters registration exercise in order to accommodate those who had issues with the biometric machines.
He gave assurance that the issue with the voters register would not repeat itself in 2015 because the commission would issue a permanent voters card.
“But for people to get it, their data must have been in the register,” he explained.
