By Temidayo Akinsuyi
Festus Okoye, a lawyer, is the National
Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee of
the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). In this interview
with TEMIDAYO AKINSUYI, he expressed the readiness of the electoral
umpire to proceed with Saturday’s Presidential and National Assembly
Elections. He also spoke on the readiness of the commission to conduct
elections in areas battling with security challenges. Excerpts:
There are reports that INEC may further postpone Saturday’s elections again. How true is that?
No! We are going ahead with the election. We are ready for this election.
There
were reports that there may be a staggered election which was also one
of the reasons why the election was postponed. What is your take on
this?
The issue of staggered election was never on the table. The
issue on the table was going ahead with the election. If we went on
with the election, some polls would have opened at 8am, 9am and 10am and
12am midnight. The only thing we had was differential opening of the
poll. That was the only issue in the cart and we discountenanced it.
What
is your commission doing about conducting elections in volatile areas
in the North East especially in areas where we have internally displaced
persons?
Before this period, we developed a framework for voting
by persons who are internally displaced and thereafter we issued a
regulation and guidelines for voting by Internally Displaced Persons
(IDPs). Up to this particular period, we have identified IDPs in 15
states but as we are moving towards the elections, it may lead to
upscale.
What we have said is that we have a data of all the
persons who are internally displaced in various parts of the country in
Borno, Yobe and Benue. During the Continuous Voters Registration
exercise, those that lost their PVCs and whose names are in the voters
register, we printed their PVCs and handed over to them. Those that have
not registered before; we registered them and also gave them PVCs. We
identified the camps of the IDPs and elections will be conducted in
those camps based on the registration areas of all the people in the
camps.
Wherever it is possible to conduct elections, we are going
to conduct elections in those areas. Wherever it is impossible to
conduct elections and the security agencies are saying they cannot
protect those areas, of course we won’t conduct elections in those
areas. The implication is that it is either the people are completely
displaced or partially displaced. But our assurance is that wherever it
is possible to conduct election in a state that have challenges of
insurgency or insecurity, we will conduct election in those areas.
The
governor of Borno state was attacked in Gamboru by Boko Haram
insurgents while campaigning for the elections. What safety measures
have you put in place to secure the lives of your ad-hoc members who
will be conducting elections in these areas?
We won’t just move
ad-hoc staff arbitrarily to places where we believe are very vulnerable
or places we believe that if we deploy them to, they are likely to come
to harm. We have been working with the Intelligence Consultative
Committee on Election Security to map out places that we regard as
flashpoints, places that have serious problems of insurgency and places
that we have camps of IDPs. It is not as if we are oblivious of some of
the security challenges but we are working with all these organs and
the Resident Electoral Commissioners in these states that have
challenges of insecurity are in touch with all the critical
stakeholders in terms of where it is possible to conduct elections and
places where it is impossible to conduct elections or where the
registration areas has to be moved or adjusted to make sure that people
vote. Wherever it is possible for people to vote, we will make sure that
the people are not disenfranchised. So we are determined to make sure
that every eligible Nigerian votes in this election unless it becomes
practically impossible to conduct elections in some places in which case
the registration areas will be adjusted to enable people to vote.
Wherever it is secured to conduct elections, we conduct elections in
those areas.
Source:- Independentng
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