The Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission, Professor Attahiru Jega, has said that the commission will check rigging in the 2015 general elections through the use of card readers.
Jega who made this statement, on Thursday, when he delivered a lecture titled “Stakeholders and the Electoral Process in Nigeria,” during an event by the Department of Sociology, University of Lagos, said that the use of card readers would detect impersonation at polling units.
He explained that on election day polling officers would ask voters to authentic their statuses by carrying out fingerprints via the machines.
Jega said fake voters would be detected by the machines and that they would not be allowed to vote.
“If you buy voter cards, you can’t use them on voting day because the mechanism we are putting in place in every polling unit will detect fraud and whoever that was involved will be arrested on the spot for electoral fraud and prosecution.”
The electoral commission chairman described the recent Osun State governorship poll as the best election so far, adding that the commission will not rest on its laurels.
He said efforts were on to make the Adamawa State governorship election coming up in October better than the Osun election.
Jega said that “An Election Risk Management Tool, designed with support from the African Union and International IDEA has been deployed ahead of 2015 to enable the commission to gather information about risk factors associated with elections; be able to analyse them and deploy effective measures to contain or mitigate those factors, towards ensuring peaceful and violence-free elections.
“All guidelines and regulations on the electoral process are being revised while discussion has commenced with legal experts across the country on how to enact and gazette them.”
Present at the occasion were the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academics and Research), UNILAG, Professor Babajide Alo, Vice Chancellor, Lagos State University, Professor John Obafunwa, and Canadian High Commissioner in Nigeria, Mr. Perry Calderwood.
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