By Gabriel Okoro, Abuja
With less than 37days to the upcoming general elections in the country, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it has so far accomplished 10 out of 14 activities on the Timetable and Schedule of Activities for the election.
Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu made this revelation on Wednesday in Abuja at the Inter-agency Consultative Committee on Election Security.
According to Professor Yakubu, the four outstanding activities are the publication of the list of candidates, the submission of the names of polling agents by political parties, the last day of campaign and the dates for the two categories of elections.
“For emphasis, the Presidential and National Assembly elections will hold on Saturday 16th February 2019 followed by the Governorship, State Assembly and Area Council elections in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to be held on Saturday 2nd March 2019”, he said.
The Commission says it has undertook a nationwide registration of voters and integrated the new registrants to the national register of voters for the 2019 General Elections of which its final register now stands at 84,004,084 voters.
According to the Commission, this is simply the largest database of citizens in Africa and one of the largest voter registers in the world.
The INEC boss disclosed further that the Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) for new registrants as well as those who are already registered but had requested for transfer of their registrations to other locations or the replacement of PVCs for various reasons have been reprinted and available for collection.
The Commission while describing the Nigeria Police Force as the lead agency for election security says learning from the experience of 2015, there is need for a different approach to the deployment of security forces during elections.
“We need a new security architecture for 2019 consistent with the provision of Section 29(3) of the Electoral Act 2010 as amended”, Professor Yakubu added.
Other key discussion expected at the meeting is modalities for actualising the provision of the law as cited above.
The Commission to this end, pledged to ensure that elections are organised in such a manner that the security agencies are not perceived to be running parallel arrangement with it. Rather, it would strictly be INEC’s plan for the election that should be implemented.