Unless the Federal Government provides INEC with N74 billion for the voters’ registration exercise within the next two weeks, Nigerians should forget the 2011 general elections, the commission’s chairman Attahiru Jega told lawmakers in Abuja yesterday.
The Independent National Electoral Commission said it requires the funds to compile a new voters’ register, given the irredeemable problems with the existing register, which was compiled in 2006 using substandard equipment.
INEC plans to deploy new direct data capturing machines to all the 120,000 polling units across the country to register around 70 million eligible voters for the elections coming up in January.
“We have made all our submissions to the executive that whether we are going through the manufactures or through vendors, we must get the funds latest by 11 August. If we don’t get it by that time, then we can as well as forget the elections,” Jega told members of the House of Representatives Committee on Electoral Matters.
“This is because it will be very, very difficult to assure them (manufacturers) to meet procurement requirement if they have no assurance, with no contracts assigned and all the necessary procurement processes followed.”
Jega said for the commission to meet up with the dateline, they needed waiver from the cumbersome procurement process.
“We also made it clear that if we must be able to achieve this, we must also have some waivers from all the traditional conventional procurement process. If we follow that, there would be no time to do it. But what we can guarantee you is that whatever procurement process we take, we can grantee transparency,” he said.
“The time is very, very tight,” the chairman said. “We don’t want to leave anybody in doubt about that. This is a constitutional matter and it is beyond us and if the required funds are to be provided through required legal lied down process it would also be a futile exercise.”
He reiterated his earlier stand that the voters registered he inherited was completely unreliable for any credible elections.
“From the information we have before our hands, we are sure that a clean-up of the existing voters’ register would never lead to a credible election,” he said.
Jega said the National Assembly has already shifted the deadline for completion of voters registration exercise to 9 November.
Committee chairman Rep Musa Sarkin-Adar (PDP, Sokoto) said if resources were provided to the commission, there would be no excuse for failure.
“The committee expects your commission to reciprocate this gesture by rising up to the challenge to shame our detractors and deepen our democratic culture,” he said.
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