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Aspirants who
emerged from political parties’ primary elections held after the 15
January deadline issued by the Independent National Electoral
Commission will not be eligible to contest in the 2011 general
elections, Atahiru Jega, chairman of the commission, has said.

Mr. Jega said this
on Wednesday while appearing before the Senate over hiccups in the
ongoing voters’ registration project. He said that the timetable issued
by INEC is an equivalent of a law, as provided by the 2010 Electoral
Act.

“The provision of
the Act clearly says that INEC should provide guidelines for political
parties’ primaries and convention and the guidelines for the election,”
Mr. Jega said.

He added that the decision to stick with the timetable is meant to bring sanity and discipline to the system.

“The timetable is
very clear; every primary ends on the 15th of January. All nominations
should be submitted by the 31st of January. If we wake up and somebody
says he is going to do primary again long after 15th of January, we are
obligated to draw his attention to the provision that the date for
primary has closed. That is what we have done, and I do not see how we
can be seen to break any law or acted contrary to the provision of the
law,” he further said.

The INEC chair said
his commission has consulted with many lawyers on the issue and are
confident they took the right decision. His verdict, although
astounding to some senators who are hoping to be re-elected in a rerun
of their primary election, clarifies contrary moves by some political
parties to hold primary election long after the 15 January deadline.

Ten finger prints

Mr. Jega also
defended the decision of the commission to capture ten fingerprints in
the ongoing voter registration, saying it was the safest way to avoid
multiple registrations during the project.

He added that the
commission took the decision considering that in 2006, some politicians
used palm kernel nuts to thumb print voter registration documents.

“The more fingers
you use, the less the possibility of multiple registrations. It reduces
the possibility of multiple registrations to 1 to 5 million if you use
ten fingers. We are so confident because it will reduce the problem of
credibility in our electoral system,” he explained.

He argued that only
one in five million multiple registrations could beat the system and
that the software even has the ability to distinguish indents of the
fingers from other indented objects like the palm kernel nuts.

He added that the software can also identify still images captured from photographs.