28th March, 2015
Simon Ateba/Jos
The INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner in Plateau state, Dr. Godwin Kwanga, said on Saturday that there will be no election in 14 polling units in the state because the names of the voters there “did not reflect on the register”.
“We don’t have any registers to take there,” Kwanga said in an interview with our correspondent. He explained that a technical issues occurred twice and voters there will not be able to vote.
There were four of such polling units in Jos North, four in Jos South and about four in Kanam and elsewhere, he said.
Apart from those ones, in Jos North, several voters were still expecting to see either INEC officials or election materials there at 1:00 pm. Tension was rising in several of the polling units, the Commissioner of Police said.
The REC said that everyone who was in the queue before one pm would be accredited and voting would last as long as the last person in the queue votes.
In other parts of Plateau and especially in Jos, voting was going on smoothly with few itches. The card readers could not identify the finger prints of many voters even after reading their cards and in some cases, electoral officers did not know how to use them, Kwanga said.
Voters around INEC head office in Miango Road in Kufang stood patiently waiting to be accredited. Elsewhere in the state capital, things seemed to be going on normally.
Although a tension prone state, accreditation was going on peacefully in most parts of the state. Our correspondents saw long queues in Jos, an indication that the turnout would be huge despite some challenges.