Nigeria Content Online

Next year’s
elections may be seriously hindered if the N74billion needed by the
Independent National Electoral Commission for fresh voters’ register is
not provided in 14 days, Atahiru Jega, the commission’s Chairman warned
yesterday.

Mr Jega informed
the House of Representatives committee on INEC yesterday that the
voters register he inherited is totally unreliable for any credible
elections, warning that it would require extraordinary efforts to meet
the 2011 election’s deadline if the fund for its replacement, is not
provided within next two weeks. He said funds must be made available
for the exercise on or before August 11, 2010. “We don’t want to leave
anybody in doubt about that,” he said. “This is a constitutional matter
and it is beyond us. The calculation is that, if we can allow three
months for procurement, to ensure that all the necessary equipment are
procured, all the required personnel are recruited and trained, all the
logistics are deployed within three months, then we should be able to,
from the last week of October, to the first week of November (two
weeks) conduct fresh registration of voters. But that will mean that
within this time, we are able to deploy Direct Capture Machines (DCM)
in all the 120,000 voters registration centres in the country. This
requires a lot of resources even for the procurement of the machines
alone.”

Mr Jega has also requested for a waiver of routine procurement
procedures, to will help streamline the process of a prompt contracting
and deployment of machines for the exercise. He said the commission
will procure the Direct Capture Machines directly from the manufactures
and not from vendors; to avoid the mistakes stalled the earlier
contract of the commission under Maurice Iwu. “We will spend about N57
billion if we are to purchase directly from the manufactures”, he said.
“But it will cost about N74 billion if we have to go through vendors,”
he said. The amount includes procurement, recruitment, training of
staff and logistics. He said the cost of the equipment alone, is
between 57 and 69% of the total cost of conducting fresh voters
registration. If the plans do not stand, he explained that the best
option left to INEC for genuine voters register would be the shifting
of the dateline in the Electoral Act.