A civil society organization, Initiative for Grassroot Advancement (INGRA) has picked holes in the decision of Kogi State Independent Electoral Commission (KOSIEC) on card readers for the conduct December 12 local government elections.
In a pre-election report signed by its Executive Director, Hamza Aliyu, INGRA noted that without card readers, the possibility of conducting fair and credible elections is slim.
At a recent stakeholder engagement, Chairman of KOSIEC, Mamman Nda Eri announced that the commission will not make use of card reader in the December 12 local government council elections.
Eri said the reason is that the use of card readers as such provision were not included in Kogi state electoral law and guidelines. He explained that voters card and voters register provided for by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would be largely relied on.
In the pre-election report, INGRA noted that “the announcement by the State Independent Electoral Commission (SIEC) that it was not going to use the smart card readers for authentication of voters because it was not in the law establishing the commission took many stakeholders by surprise.
“This statement convinced many watchers that the likelihood of free and credible polls is slim at best.
“This is coming on the heels of research that showed that there were significant quality issues with the voters register which needed to be looked into.”
INGRA’s pre-election report also identified the electoral commission’s plan to recruit civil servants as ad-hoc staff as a cause for concern among stakeholders.
“The alleged use of public servants in the state as ad-hoc staff for the elections has generated fears within stakeholders of less credible polls.
“Despite the explanations from the commission, it is felt that as workers on the payroll of a state government that has little or no checks from the legislature, SIEC should have sourced the ad-hoc staff from outside the civil service,” the report said.
INGRA’s pre-election report also identified Dekina, Olamaboro, Lokoja, Ijumu, Adavi and Kabba-Bunu local government areas as flash points for possible election day security concerns.
With 1,646,350 registered voters, elections will hold in 2,548 polling units across 239 wards in the state.
