By George Onah
Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission,INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega, has said there will  be no extension of the date allotted for the voter registration exercise slated to commence on Saturday, even as he appealed to all eligible Nigerians to register for the elections.

Also, the Rivers State government has warned that children of school age, whose parents fail to register would not be accommodated in the free education scheme of the state, while voters’ cards would also be needed to access the free health facilities in the state.

Speaking at the forum of INEC and religious leaders in the six geo-political zones of the country in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, yesterday, INEC’s chairman said that the Direct Data Capturing machine were enough to register Nigerians for the period stipulated for the exercise.

He said that the entire country would need 120,000 DDC machines but that the commission ordered for 132,000, explaining that the extra ones are to make up for eventualities of breakdown or any fault.

For Rivers State, he said, there would be 4,442 polling units and that each poling unit was expected to have about 750 voters or more, pointing out that some polling stations may have up to 3,000 while some others may be empty but that the commission aims at working with 750 voters per unit.

Jega disclosed that in addition to other statistics of the voters, there would be finger-prints of the ten fingers of the persons being registered, adding that the hands and fingers of the voters must be thoroughly washed to hasten the capture of the finger prints.

“If the fingers are dirty, there could be delay and each registration is expected to last for about 10 minutes per person. Fake voter’s cards would be detected and printing such would be an exercise in futility,” he said.