The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC has shifted the blames of missing names of prospective voters on its register to the affected eligible voters.
In some polling units across the country, prospective voters with their Permanent Voters Cards searched in vain for their names on the Commission’s manual voters list.
Reacting to the development while briefing newsmen, Barrister Festus Okoye, National Commissioner and Chairman Voters Education and Publicity Committee of INEC, said the affected voters who could not exercise their franchise were to be blamed.
He claimed such eligible voters did not make use of the window created by INEC to verify their names on the Voters Register during the seven days set aside for verification of the list of voters.
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He said: “They need to find out their names. We displayed voter’s register for claims and objections for seven days for people to check their names on the voter’s register. Their failure to do this accounts for this last minute situation where people are looking for their names.”
He admitted the delay in the commencement in accreditation and voting across the states but disclosed that the Commission has directed for extension of voting hours in the identified polling units.
“There shall be an extension of voting time in polling units where accredited and voting were delayed. If a voting unit is supposed to be activated by 8 am and close by 2 pm and it isn’t activated by 8 and it starts by 12 noon, then we add the hours that have been lost.
“So, if you delay by 4 hours, we extend by 4 hours.
“We expect that all the polling units will open by 8 am, but we knew that there will be few challenges, that there is a possibility that in few places, our staff may have a slight delay. There might be security issues that may delay their collection of materials. ”
The INEC National Commissioner denied reports of missing results sheets but noted that the delay might have been informed by the action of presiding officers whom he claimed were guarding the sensitive materials jealously to avoid a situation where they fall into wrong hands at polling units.
“We have had reports of delay in bringing results sheets, in some of those places, the result sheets are some of the sensitive materials for this election. It isn’t as if they are missing but the presiding officers are guarding the reports sheets jealously so that they don’t fall into the wrong hands.
” In some places, the party agents insisted to see all materials related to the election before the process could commence. But in some of these places, we are on top of this challenge and voting has started.”
While he expressed regret over incidents of malfunctioning of Smart Card Readers, the INEC spokesman claimed reports of hacked SCR were unfounded.
” We have received such reports, what has happened is that the Card Reader malfunctions and our people have intervened in those places. Nothing has happened, our card readers are offline and you can’t hack into something that is offline. If a card reader malfunctions, we replace it with a good one. That’s what has happened.”
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