The chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, has said that it postponed the presidential and governorship elections because it was overwhelmed by management of huge logistics, which was made worse by poor weather conditions, severe disruptions to its mobilization processes, from fire out breaks at its various operational offices.
He maintained that the decision to postpone the elections was not induced by security concerns or by any one, but that the Commission takes absolutely responsibility for it. He spoke at a briefing, today in Abuja, attended by political party representatives, the media and local and international observers.
Yakubu said sabotage to its efforts by fire incidents in Anambra, Abia, Plateau states and other places, which destroyed several sensitive election materials, such as the card readers diverted its efforts and impeded the free flow of its logistic.
He said the most serious disruption was the one that resulted in the destruction of over 4000 card readers in Anambra and the reality that it would take it more than a day to reconfigure the cards for use on Saturday.
Yakubu, said that the postponement became more necessary because of its resolve not to have staggered elections which could impact on the transparency of the process.
He said in the past one week, bad weather around the various distribution hubs in Abuja, Port Harcourt, Kano, Maiduguri and Lagos, have affected its efforts to move materials around the country and if it had gone ahead with the elections as previously planned, voting in different parts of the country, would not have opened and taken place at the same time.
The INEC Chairman also spoke about the enormity of the task that assuage the commission on all sides, which has made it impossible to work seamlessly as it had planned. He mentioned the various court cases and judgments which were compelling it to add or drop candidates.
According to Yakubu the commission was saddled with the enormous task of moving huge electoral materials, even though many would not appreciate the magnitude of the task during general elections. He added that it would not be strange for such enormous task to encounter some challenges.
The INEC, he said had begun to plan for the 2019 elections since November 2017 and had followed and implemented a carefully planned timetable and had achieved success in its efforts until things went bad on Saturday.
According to him, the commissioned considered February 17, which is a Sunday for the polls but that would have affected the Christian worship and Monday was skipped because of the time it would take to configure the card readers being moved to Anambra.
He announced a new timetable for achieving the February 23 date for the presidential polls, which would culminate in the dispatch of ad-hoc staff to their various stations by Friday, February 22, 2019.
Yakubu assured that the sensitive materials which have been moved would be retrieved and taken into custody in Central Bank from where they would be moved to their locations by Wednesday in preparation for the election.
