Professor Mahmood Yakubu, Chairman of the Independent
National Electoral Commission (INEC), has taken full responsibility for the postponement
of the elections.
In a new statement released this evening, he cited bad
weather and other logistics issues, as well as cases of lawsuits filed against
the commission. He, however, restated the commitment of the commission to
ensuring free, fair and credible elections.
He said the commission was confronted with myriad of
challenges and had to resort to postponing the elections.
See the full statement below...
l. About thirteen hours ago, I conveyed to Nigerians the
decision of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to reschedule
the 2019 general elections by one week. Presidential and National Assembly
elections earlier scheduled for 16th February 2019 will now hold on Saturday
23rd February 2019, while Governorship, State Assembly and FCT Area Council
elections scheduled for 2nd March 20l9 will now hold on Saturday 9th March
2019. The one-week adjustment was a painful one for INEC, but necessary in the
overall interest of our democracy.
2. Nigerians will recall that when this Commission was
appointed in November 2015, we promised Nigerians two cardinal things. First,
we shall work hard to consolidate the improvements made in the management of
elections. Secondly, we shall always be open, transparent and responsive. We
have strived diligently to keep these promises in very trying circumstances.
3. In keeping with our promise to consolidate the gains of
the last two electoral cycles, the Commission has conducted 195 rerun and
off-season elections across the country since the last general elections. Most
of these elections have been generally adjudged to show progressive
improvements in planning, execution and outcomes.
4. This commitment to continue to improve on election
administration has informed our preparations for the 20l9 general elections.
Our goal is to plan carefully, execute meticulously and bring stability into
election management in Nigeria. Consequently, we announced fixed dates for elections
in Nigeria to the effect that Presidential and National Assembly elections will
always hold on the third Saturday in February of an election year. While the
Governorship and State Assembly elections follow two weeks later. Having
settled this, we began the planning quite early, with a Strategic Plan (SP), 3
Strategic Programme of Action (SPA) and an Election Project Plan (EPP). In
fact, the plan for the 2019 general elections was ready in November 2017 and we
subsequently issued the timetable and schedule of activities for the elections
over one year ago on 9th January 2018. We carefully followed the timetable and
implemented 13 of the 14 activities as scheduled. We kept to the timeframe and
have not missed the date fixed for any single activity.
5. In preparing for the 2019 general elections, we have come
face-to-face with the realities of conducting such an extensive national
deployment of men and materials in a developing country like ours. It is said
that elections constitute the most extensive mobilization of men and materials
that any country could undertake in peacetime. The challenges of doing so, even
under the best of circumstances, are enormous. Within a period of 16 months, we
registered over 14 million Nigerians as new voters, collecting their names,
addresses, photographs and their entire ten fingerprints. Beyond that, we
prepared, printed and delivered their Permanent Voter Cards for collection. I
should note that of the 14.28 million Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) made
available for collection, about 10.87 million or 76.12% have been collected.
6. It is often not appreciated the magnitude of activities
that the Commission undertakes during general elections. Not only have we
recruited and trained about 1 million young people to serve as ad hoc staff,
the magnitude of materials mobilized for our elections isenormous. For
instance, the Commission has printed 421.7 million ballot papers for six
scheduled elections, as well as 13.6 million leaves of result forms for the
Presidential election alone. Indeed, managing 91 political parties and 23,316
candidates for whom votes will be cast in 119,973 polling units by over 84
million voters is certainly astounding. No doubt, preparations for the 2019
general elections have been extremely tasking for the Commission.
7. It is therefore not unexpected that such a tremendous
national mobilization of men and materials will encounter operational
challenges and we have had our own fair share of such challenges. There has
been delay in delivering ballot papers and result sheets for the elections
which is not unusual. However, I must emphasize that all the ballot papers and
result sheets were ready before the elections despite the very tight legal
timeframe for finalizing nomination of candidates and dealing with the spate of
legal challenges that accompany it. In this regard, the Commission has been
sued or joined in over 640 court cases arising from the nomination of
candidates. As at today, there are 40 different court orders against the
Commission on whether to add or drop candidates. The net effect of these is
that there is usually roughly a one-month window for the Commission to print
ballot papers and result sheets and either fly or transport them to several
destinations until they finally get to each polling unit. Unfortunately, in the
last one week, flights within the country have been adversely affected by bad
weather. For instance, three days ago, we were unable to deliver materials to
some locations due to bad weather. We therefore had to rely on slow-moving long
haulage vehicles to locations that can be serviced by air in spite of the fact
that we created five zonal airport hubs: Abuja (North Central), Port Harcourt
(South South and South East), Kano (North West), Maiduguri and Yola (North
East) and Lagos (South West) to facilitate the delivery of electoral logistics.
8. Apart from these logistical challenges, we also faced
what may well be attempts to sabotage our preparations. In a space of two
weeks, we had to deal with serious fire incidents in three of our offices in
Isiala Ngwa South Local Government Area of Abia State, Qu’an Pan Local
Government Area of Plateau State and our Anambra State Office at Awka. In all
three cases, serious disruptions were occasioned by the fire, further diverting
our attention from regular preparations to recovery from the impact of the
incidents. In Isiala Ngwa South, hundreds of PVCs were burnt, necessitating the
re-compiling of the affected cards and reprinting in time to ensure that the
affected voters are not disenfranchised. I am glad that all the cards were
quickly reprinted and made available for collection by their owners.
9. In Qu'an Pan Local Government Area, our entire office was
razed, destroying all the materials prepared for the elections printed register
of voters, ballot boxes, voting cubicles and several electricitygenerating
sets. 11 Registration Areas and over 100 polling units were affected by the
fire. We recovered quickly and have since replaced everything destroyed. In
addition, we secured a suitable building from which to conduct the elections.
10. Perhaps the most serious was the fire incident in our
Anambra State Office at Awka, which destroyed over 4,600 Smart Card Readers
being prepared for the elections. These Card Readers take at least six months
to procure. Despite this setback, we have practically recovered from this by
mopping up every available spare SCR across the country and within 24 hours
delivered them for elections to hold in Anambra State.
11. All these challenges mean that there have been
differences in preparations from one state to another. Our overall assessment
is that if the elections went on as planned, polls will not open at 8am in all
polling units nationwide. Yet, we are determined that polls must hold at the
same time everywhere in the country. In this way, elections will not be
staggered. This is very important to public perception of elections as free,
fair and credible. We promised Nigerians that we shall be open, transparent and
responsive.
12. Faced with these challenges, we initially thought that
we only require a maximum of 24 hours to resolve the logistics issues involved
and complete our deployment for the election. This would mean shifting the
elections to commence on Sunday 17th February 2019. However, given the
restriction of movement during elections, that could affect many voters who
worship on Sundays. While the Commission was considering the following Monday
18th February 2019 as an option, our ICT Department advised us that it would
require 5-6 days to reconfigure about 180,000 Smart Card Readers earlier
programmed to work only on election day Saturday 16th February 20l9. It is for
this reason that the Commission decided to adjust the election dates to
Saturday 23rd February 2019 for Presidential and National Assembly elections
and a consequential adjustment of Governorship, State Assembly and FCT Area
Council elections to Saturday 9th March 2019.
13. Some sensitive
materials have been distributed. However, all such materials have been
retrieved and will be taken back to custody of the Central Bank of Nigeria. I
want to assure you that there will be properaudit to account for all materials.
14. In the next few days, the Commission will work on the
basis of the following plan:
S/No. Activity Timeframe
- Completion/confirmation of deployment of materials (Monday
l8th February 2019)
- Configuration of the Smart Card Readers (Sunday 17th
Thursday 21st February 2019)
- Receipt and Deployment of sensitive materials to LGAs
(Wednesday 20 and Thursday 21st February 2019)
- Refresher training for ad hoc staff (Thursday 21st
February 2019)
- Deployment of personnel to RACs (Friday 22nd of February
2019)
- Election Day (Saturday 23rd February 2019)
15. I want to appeal to Nigerians and all other stakeholders
for their understanding in what has been a very difficult decision for the
Commission. But we believe that ultimately this is for the good of our
democracy and country. I wish to assure you of our commitment to free, fair and
credible elections.
16. As Chairman of INEC, and on behalf of the Commission, we
take full responsibility for what happened and we regret any inconvenience our
decision might have caused.
17. Thank you and God bless.
