CHAIRMAN of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega

ABUJA—CHAIRMAN of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega, yesterday, said the greatest challenge facing the commission was the short time within which to compile voters register and conduct the polls.

Jega who spoke when he received members of Course 32 of the Nigerian Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, NIPSS, Kuru, Jos, in his office said the commission was targeting the registration of 70 million voters in the forth coming voters’ registration exercise which he said would commence on the third week of October and terminate in the first week of November.

The INEC boss said that if the commission had more time at its disposal, it would have done a marvelous job in the conduct of the elections.

He said: “One of the first things we did was to look at the old voters’ register and we were concerned about what we discovered about the current register as it clearly showed a lot of discrepancies which made us to decide that it was not good enough for next year’s elections.

“Obviously the task of attempting to do a fresh voters’ register to prepare for elections early next year is very formidable and challenging task but we have overcome some of these challenges especially the issue of funds.

We have made a case for funding and we have received the funding that we requested for.

“However the time constraint is still of concern to us. Time remains our greatest challenge, although we are doing our best to see that we overcome it. The more time we have the better job we can do of this assignment.

So in terms of preparations for the elections it is clear for us that if we take the constitutional amendments into consideration and the new Electoral Act 2010 the first election is expected to hold at the earliest on January 8. If this must be so then we have to complete the voters registration by November 9, and we have to certify the register by December 9.

“These are the time lines according to the 2010 Electoral Act and also the constitution, although this is a remarkable improvement in terms of time compared to the 2006 Electoral Act as under the 2006 Electoral Act we would probably have no time to do a fresh voters registration. We will try to register everybody before the elections. As we prepare for the voters’ registration we will put into our preparation the need to avoid the mistakes of the past.”

The INEC chairman said the commission had tried to address some of the problems noticed in the past exercise such as inadequate and inaccurate equipment by ensuring that they were appropriate in terms of specifications.

He added: “We also ensured that the problems of sub_standard equipment are addressed. There was also in the past the problem of poorly trained registration officers. We’ll ensure that our ad_ hoc staff are appropriately and adequately trained.

We are planning to acquire Direct Data Capture Machines, DDC, and we are going to deploy one in each of the 120,000 polling units in the country. The registration will take place from the third week of October into the first week of November and we are working hard to ensure that we succeed.”

Explaining how the registration exercise would progress, Jega said: “We have estimated that between nine and ten minutes we will register about one person using the direct capture machines, so working for about eight hours daily we expect to register about 70 million in fourteen days.

This has taken into consideration all lapses so if there about 70 million Nigerians waiting to be registered we hope to finish the registration in fourteen days with about 360,000 registration officers who we are going to recruit from the NYSC.”

He said the process for the acquisition of the DDC machines was at an advanced stage, adding that the commission was engaging the services of “very good companies that can actually deliver within the time frame.”

Earlier the leader of the group, Olu Obafemi, had told the INEC Chairman that they were at the Commission to interact with the members and to share knowledge on the way forward in the quest for a credible election in the country.