By Ben Agande
The chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Professor Attahiru Jega has said that all multiple entries in the voters register to be used for the re-run elections in Delta State Thursday have been cleaned up to ensure the conduct of free and fair election.

Professor Jega who disclosed this TUesday during a meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners in Abuja also disclosed that new security features have been put in place for the ballot papers and ballot boxes in order to make it ‘less likely for ballots to be swapped, stolen or wrongly transferred’.

Professor Jega told his resident Electoral Commissioners that the Delta Re-run elections provides ‘a veritable context to demonstrate that the commission is capable of conducting elections that are qualitatively superior ones’ adding that ‘Nigerians see the Delta election as a barometer for gauging how things have either changed or remained unchanged in INEC’s conduct of elections’.

On security for the election, professor Jega said the commission has made ‘coordinated security preparations involving all security agencies to ensure timely delivery and protection of election materials and officials, as well as dissuade fraud and malpractices during polls’.

As a way of ensuring that staff of the commission are shielded from accusation of bias, Professor Jega said the commission is considering ‘giving prominent roles in the election to respected Nigerians including serving as returning officers’.

The INEC boss further revealed that the commission has put in place a news accreditation process and procedure ‘to reduce malpractices and ensure that results are quickly announced and posted at each polling units’ adding that an improved result transmission procedure has also been put in place for the Delta re-run election.

On the forthcoming Registration of voters, professor Jega revealed that the decision to recruit members of the National Youth Service Corp was informed by the need to ‘retain a measure of Institutional control over the Assistant Registration Officer”.

Professor Jega noted that the recent verification and harmonization of polling units indicated that there were only 28 discrepancies, promising that these would be updated in the DDC machines and on the mapping of the polling units.

He said there was the need for the improvement in the communication lines between the states and the headquarters of the commission.