The chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega Wednesday declared that the November 16 governorship election would be the best election so far in the country.
Speaking on the occasion of a stakeholder’s forum held at the Women Development center, Awka, Jega said the commission had made adequate preparation to make sure there was a credible, free and fair election.
However, he appealed to political parties and their candidates to cooperate with the commission to actualize the goal, adding that the body would give all the parties and candidates a level playing ground in the contest.
He said INEC had corrected the controversial voters register earlier given to political parties after the recent continuous voters registration in the state which according to him was an error from the computer that brought out the ages of some voters as 16 years which would cause a serious problem during the election.
Presenting the corrected copies of the voters register to political parties, Jega asked them to carefully study them and raise objection where necessary before the Saturday election.
” We are transparent and we will continue to be transparent and fair to all the parties.We are human beings and we can make mistakes and correct them”, he said.
” We have concluded the training of our staff, we have introduced security features to protect our ballot papers and ballot boxes for every polling unit with a unique code number for each unit so that you can not take a ballot paper from one unit to another”.
On multiple registration, the INEC boss said that the commission had already arrested some defaulters and were concluding arrangements to prosecute them and warned voters in the state who had double registration not to go to the polling units on Saturday as security agents had been directed to arrest any offender.
Jega warned that there would be no movement of government officials in the name of monitoring the Saturday election, adding that party agents must wear INEC tags to enable them enter and stay at the polling boots assigned to them.
Equally, he advised governorship candidates against going to the polling booths to vote with their armed aides, noting that it had caused violence in the past.