19th January, 2015
The Nigerian Presidential Election is just 26 days away, but myriad of problems still persist at the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
The election, on 14 February, will see 14 candidates share votes from about 68.8 million people, but as at last week, only a little over 38.7 million voters had collected their Permanent Voters’ Cards, PVCs.
Without their PVCs, millions of Nigerians will not be able to vote, according to INEC, which is organising the polls.
Besides, although 68.8 million people have registered to vote, only 54 million PVCs have been supplied by the contractor. About 14 million cards are yet to be delivered less than a month to the election.
INEC says everything should be ready by 28 January, but time is running out and Nigerians are becoming impatient.
In Nigeria, there are 150,000 voting points or voting units and every polling unit will use a card reader machine on election day.
However, as at last week, there were just about 130,000 card readers already supplied. About 20,000 others are yet to arrive.
INEC has also said that it intends to organise the election in the 36 states of the Federation, including the three states in the North East, where Boko Haram is snatching town after town, torching houses and killing people.
It is not yet clear how election will take place there or how millions of internally displaced Nigerians will be able to vote.
It is not also clear how persons with disabilities, especially the visually impaired and the deaf, will be able to vote.
All these problems coupled with others make many wonder why it is so hard for INEC to print and distribute voters cards when the commission had four years to do so and billions of naira to spend.
It is our opinion that if these problems are not tackled before the election, the outcome may not be fair and credible.