Professor Mahmood Yakubu, Chairman of the Independent National
Electoral Commission (INEC), has taken full responsibility for the
postponement of the elections.
In a new statement released this evening, he cited bad weather and
other logistics issues, as well as cases of lawsuits filed against the
commission. He, however, restated the commitment of the commission to
ensuring free, fair and credible elections.
See the full statement below…
l. About thirteen hours ago, I conveyed to Nigerians the decision of
the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to reschedule the
2019 general elections by one week. Presidential and National Assembly
elections earlier scheduled for 16th February 2019 will now hold on
Saturday 23rd February 2019, while Governorship, State Assembly and FCT
Area Council elections scheduled for 2nd March 20l9 will now hold on
Saturday 9th March 2019. The one-week adjustment was a painful one for
INEC, but necessary in the overall interest of our democracy.2. Nigerians will recall that when this Commission was appointed in
November 2015, we promised Nigerians two cardinal things. First, we
shall work hard to consolidate the improvements made in the management
of elections. Secondly, we shall always be open, transparent and
responsive. We have strived diligently to keep these promises in very
trying circumstances.3. In keeping with our promise to consolidate the gains of the last
two electoral cycles, the Commission has conducted 195 rerun and
off-season elections across the country since the last general
elections. Most of these elections have been generally adjudged to show
progressive improvements in planning, execution and outcomes.4. This commitment to continue to improve on election administration
has informed our preparations for the 20l9 general elections. Our goal
is to plan carefully, execute meticulously and bring stability into
election management in Nigeria. Consequently, we announced fixed dates
for elections in Nigeria to the effect that Presidential and National
Assembly elections will always hold on the third Saturday in February of
an election year. While the Governorship and State Assembly
elections follow two weeks later. Having settled this, we began the
planning quite early, with a Strategic Plan (SP), 3 Strategic Programme
of Action (SPA) and an Election Project Plan (EPP). In fact, the plan
for the 2019 general elections was ready in November 2017 and we
subsequently issued the timetable and schedule of activities for the
elections over one year ago on 9th January 2018. We carefully followed
the timetable and implemented 13 of the 14 activities as scheduled. We
kept to the timeframe and have not missed the date fixed for any single
activity.5. In preparing for the 2019 general elections, we have come
face-to-face with the realities of conducting such an extensive national
deployment of men and materials in a developing country like ours. It
is said that elections constitute the most extensive mobilization of men
and materials that any country could undertake in peacetime. The
challenges of doing so, even under the best of circumstances, are
enormous. Within a period of 16 months, we registered over 14 million
Nigerians as new voters, collecting their names, addresses, photographs
and their entire ten fingerprints. Beyond that, we prepared, printed and
delivered their Permanent Voter Cards for collection. I should note
that of the 14.28 million Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) made available
for collection, about 10.87 million or 76.12% have been collected.6. It is often not appreciated the magnitude of activities that the
Commission undertakes during general elections. Not only have we
recruited and trained about 1 million young people to serve as ad hoc
staff, the magnitude of materials mobilized for our elections
isenormous. For instance, the Commission has printed 421.7 million
ballot papers for six scheduled elections, as well as 13.6 million
leaves of result forms for the Presidential election alone. Indeed,
managing 91 political parties and 23,316 candidates for whom votes will
be cast in 119,973 polling units by over 84 million voters is certainly
astounding. No doubt, preparations for the 2019 general elections have
been extremely tasking for the Commission.7. It is therefore not unexpected that such a tremendous national
mobilization of men and materials will encounter operational challenges
and we have had our own fair share of such challenges. There has
been delay in delivering ballot papers and result sheets for the
elections which is not unusual. However, I must emphasize that all the
ballot papers and result sheets were ready before the elections despite
the very tight legal timeframe for finalizing nomination of candidates
and dealing with the spate of legal challenges that accompany it. In
this regard, the Commission has been sued or joined in over 640 court
cases arising from the nomination of candidates. As at today, there are
40 different court orders against the Commission on whether to add or
drop candidates. The net effect of these is that there is usually
roughly a one-month window for the Commission to print ballot papers and
result sheets and either fly or transport them to several destinations
until they finally get to each polling unit. Unfortunately, in the last
one week, flights within the country have been adversely affected by bad
weather. For instance, three days ago, we were unable to deliver
materials to some locations due to bad weather. We therefore had to rely
on slow-moving long haulage vehicles to locations that can be serviced
by air in spite of the fact that we created five zonal airport hubs:
Abuja (North Central), Port Harcourt (South South and South East), Kano
(North West), Maiduguri and Yola (North East) and Lagos (South West) to
facilitate the delivery of electoral logistics.8. Apart from these logistical challenges, we also faced what may
well be attempts to sabotage our preparations. In a space of two weeks,
we had to deal with serious fire incidents in three of our offices in
Isiala Ngwa South Local Government Area of Abia State, Qu’an Pan Local
Government Area of Plateau State and our Anambra State Office at Awka.
In all three cases, serious disruptions were occasioned by the fire,
further diverting our attention from regular preparations to recovery
from the impact of the incidents. In Isiala Ngwa South, hundreds of PVCs
were burnt, necessitating the re-compiling of the affected cards and
reprinting in time to ensure that the affected voters are not
disenfranchised. I am glad that all the cards were quickly reprinted and
made available for collection by their owners.9. In Qu’an Pan Local Government Area, our entire office was razed,
destroying all the materials prepared for the elections printed register
of voters, ballot boxes, voting cubicles and several
electricitygenerating sets. 11 Registration Areas and over 100 polling
units were affected by the fire. We recovered quickly and have since
replaced everything destroyed. In addition, we secured a suitable
building from which to conduct the elections.10. Perhaps the most serious was the fire incident in our Anambra
State Office at Awka, which destroyed over 4,600 Smart Card Readers
being prepared for the elections. These Card Readers take at least six
months to procure. Despite this setback, we have practically recovered
from this by mopping up every available spare SCR across the country and
within 24 hours delivered them for elections to hold in Anambra State.11. All these challenges mean that there have been differences in
preparations from one state to another. Our overall assessment is that
if the elections went on as planned, polls will not open at 8am in all
polling units nationwide. Yet, we are determined that polls must hold at
the same time everywhere in the country. In this way, elections will
not be staggered. This is very important to public perception of
elections as free, fair and credible. We promised Nigerians that we
shall be open, transparent and responsive.12. Faced with these challenges, we initially thought that we only
require a maximum of 24 hours to resolve the logistics issues involved
and complete our deployment for the election. This would mean shifting
the elections to commence on Sunday 17th February 2019. However, given
the restriction of movement during elections, that could affect many
voters who worship on Sundays. While the Commission was considering the
following Monday 18th February 2019 as an option, our ICT Department
advised us that it would require 5-6 days to reconfigure about 180,000
Smart Card Readers earlier programmed to work only on election day
Saturday 16th February 20l9. It is for this reason that the Commission
decided to adjust the election dates to Saturday 23rd February 2019 for
Presidential and National Assembly elections and a consequential
adjustment of Governorship, State Assembly and FCT Area Council
elections to Saturday 9th March 2019.13. Some sensitive materials have been distributed. However, all
such materials have been retrieved and will be taken back to custody of
the Central Bank of Nigeria. I want to assure you that there will
be properaudit to account for all materials.14. In the next few days, the Commission will work on the basis of the following plan:
S/No. Activity Timeframe
– Completion/confirmation of deployment of materials (Monday l8th February 2019)
– Configuration of the Smart Card Readers (Sunday 17th Thursday 21st February 2019)
– Receipt and Deployment of sensitive materials to LGAs (Wednesday 20 and Thursday 21st February 2019)
– Refresher training for ad hoc staff (Thursday 21st February 2019)
– Deployment of personnel to RACs (Friday 22nd of February 2019)
– Election Day (Saturday 23rd February 2019)
15. I want to appeal to Nigerians and all other stakeholders for
their understanding in what has been a very difficult decision for the
Commission. But we believe that ultimately this is for the good of our
democracy and country. I wish to assure you of our commitment to free,
fair and credible elections.16. As Chairman of INEC, and on behalf of the Commission, we take
full responsibility for what happened and we regret any inconvenience
our decision might have caused.17. Thank you and God bless.