Mahmood Yakubu, the chairperson of the Independent National
Electoral Commission (INEC), says the claim that he is close to the government
led by the All Progressives Congress (APC), is false.
Speaking in an interview with BBC Africa, Yakubu said the
commission is committed to citizens of Nigeria and not any political party.
“The claim that I’m close to the APC-led government is an
allegation. People always say so of all the electoral commissions, including
electoral commissions in Nigeria and other countries as well,” he said.
“But look at the kind of elections that we have been
conducting of late. Different political parties have won different elections
and citizens believe that the votes are counting and they are confident in the
process.
“So, my assurance to
the citizens is that we’ll continue to do what is necessary to ensure that we
protect the integrity of the process. Our allegiance is to the people of
Nigeria and not to any political party.”
Addressing fears over possible challenges with transmitting
votes electronically, the INEC chairperson said the commission has proven its
ability to do so in previous elections such as the Ekiti and Osun governorship
elections.
“Some of them may be small elections in the Nigerian
context. But the state with the least number of registered voters in places
where we transmitted results is Ekiti, and Ekiti has more registered voters
than the Gambia and Cape Verde put together,” he said.
“We are happy with
the pilot we have conducted and we are reasonably confident in the strength of
the processes.”
He added that INEC is working with telecommunication
companies to address the issue of network blindspots which may hinder result
transmission.
“The machine on election day does not rely on internet to
accredit voters. It works offline. It only [needs] network when it comes to
transmission of results,” he said.
“But if there’s no network in the immediate vicinity, the
scanned image of the polling unit level result which is taken using the BVAS
will be transmitted as soon as the staff move from the polling unit to the
collation centres.
“We have been working
with major telecom companies in Nigeria and we are satisfied that the number of
blindspots can be addressed in the country. The number of blindspots where you
have no network is really small.”
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