BY CLIFFORD NDUJIHE
SIGNS that Saturday’s National Assembly poll would be postponed emerged as early as Friday evening, when sensitive electoral materials were yet to arrive most states of the country, including Lagos.
Basic materials such as press tags and monitoring kits for domestic observers were insufficient. A host of the observers monitored the botched poll on Saturday without kits before the postponement.
A key electoral material, result sheets, arrived the Lagos office of INEC at 8.56 a.m on Saturday. Those meant for Oyo State and some states of the South-West arrived much later.
Lagos Resident Electoral Commissioner,REC, Dr Adekunle Ogunmola assured newsmen that the materials would get to all the polling units within one hour, noting that the Navy and Air Force would assist in distributing the materials.
This never happened because as of the time Jega was announcing the postponement, the materials were still lying on the premises of the commission in Lagos.
Thereafter, Ogunmola went to monitor the polls and came back two hours later.
A frank Ogunmola told newsmen at 11 a.m after going round that the reports he was getting across the country, were not palatable as most states of the country were yet to receive sensitive electoral materials, adding that they were waiting for a directive from Abuja on the postponement of the elections.
He did not wait for too long as Jega, less than two hours later, pushed the poll to Monday. And now the date has been postponed again to Saturday.
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