EROMOSELE EBHOMELE
Following the various hitches experienced by Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in the presidential election on Saturday, the electoral umpire has extended the exercise to Sunday to allow many of those already disenfranchised to vote.
The Commission therefore directed all Resident Electoral Commissioners in the country to conduct election on Sunday in areas where there were such hitches.
Reports showed that in some areas, INEC officials were totally absent while there vere reports of violence and snatching of ballot boxes in places like Rivers, Gombe and Enugu state forcing low turn-out in some instances.
The Chairman of INEC Committee on Information and Voters Education, Mr. Chris Iyimoga, who announced this to journalists at the Media Centre of the National Collation Centre in Abuja, because of the hitches, INEC cannot conclude the process on Saturday as scheduled.
“Each REC has been informed to conduct election on Sunday where there are hitches with accreditation or voting.
“I cannot say exactly the number of states affected but the problems are not in all the states,” he said at the briefing which had other National Commissioners Ishmael Igbani; Muhammadu Wali; Engr. Nuru Yakubu; and Gladys Nwafor.
Igbani also said: “no one can really say what went wrong in Otuoke but the machine or the card readers could not capture the fingerprints of the President and the First Lady.
“Where such a situation arises, we have to use manual system.”
While speaking on the hacked website of the commission, Yakubu said: “we have lifted the contents on our website and relocated to another site.”