WITH just 11 days to the April elections, the general mood at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), headquarters in Abuja, on whose shoulders the task of ushering Nigeria into her first ever civil to civil rule, seems upbeat as the Commission officials said they had crossed 10 hurdles out of the initial 12 on the way to conducting successful elections.
Chairman of the commission, Professor Maurice Iwu had told journalists at a briefing three weeks ago that of the 12 milestones INEC has set for itself towards giving Nigerians a credible election, it has been able to implement 10 with just two left, which are to conduct an election and announce the results.
Listing some of the hurdles crossed so far, he said the commission had successfully put the issue of multiple registrations to rest with the introduction of electronic voting and the e-registration where he claimed to have about 61 million Nigerians registered, conducted candidate verification and recently released the list of State and National Assemblies candidates including that of gubernatorial candidates which has generated some controversies in the land.
Fallout from the release of the list is the disqualification Vice President Atiku Abubakar, a former governors of Anambra State, Dr. Chris Ngige and the state�s current governor, Mr Peter Obi and the inclusion of some persons indicted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over corruption, abuse of office and mismanagement of public funds, among whom are the erstwhile governor of Kogi State, Prince Abubakar Audu, two serving governors, Ali Modu Sheriff and Ibrahim Shekarau of Borno and Kano states respectively.
The action by INEC was received with mixed feelings by generality of people as lots of questions were asked as to why the supposedly indicted people made the list and those adjudged by the EFCC to be free of corruption did not, thereby testing the readiness of the commission to show transparency in the coming polls.
However, the most controversial disqualification was that of Atiku, which many believed generated more than any action taken by the commission in the recent times. To this end, the last exercise in which INEC took upon itself the responsibility of disqualifying candidates, including the VP, in spite of court orders that the commission had no powers to do so has raised fundamental questions about INEC �s readiness to conduct free and fair elections.
Concerned Nigerians, the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), and the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), have expressed worries over this state of affairs, while some others are still worried that an alleged unholy alliance existed between the presidency and INEC on the matter in which Iwu had gone about excluding the vice president from the presidential race.
Even with the controversy, INEC�s chairman, Prof Iwu had maintained that the Commission is committed to conducting a free and fair election in April, Vanguard visit to the Commission�s headquarters in Abuja on Monday, a public holiday was just like any other working day as the place was busy as ever with heavy influx of people including journalists, staff , contractors and visitors to the electoral body office.
The development gave an indication that the management and staff of the Commission are ready to forgo their sleep in the quest to ensure success of the April Polls and ensure stability for the country�s democracy.
Vanguard investigation noticed that there were several Hilux pickup vehicles waiting to be loaded with electoral materials to be dispatched to INEC offices across the country, some of the recently deployed electoral commissioners and administrative secretaries across the country were at the commission�s headquarters to take delivery of their stock of material for onward movement to their various station in preparation for the elections.
According to one of them who spoke with Vanguard, �we are all set for the elections, we have been adequately briefed by the chairman on what we must do to ensure success of the coming polls and we are all alive to that responsibility as you can see I am waiting to get my allocation of electoral materials for my state and as part of the final schedule, the display of the voters� register is set to kick off across the country .
Consequently, as a final lap of it preparation for the election, INEC began the display of the list of registered voters at proposed polling stations throughout the country. Also, Prof Iwu last Wednesday briefed the National Council of State on the level of preparedness of the commission for the elections.
It is strongly believed that the display of the list of registered voters is different from the statutory display of voters� register. The statutory display of the voters� register was said to have been carried out by the Commission in February.
The latest move by INEC , Vanguard gathered , is with a view to ensuring that prospective voters throughout the country are able to identify their polling areas before the election day. Further findings revealed that the display of the list of voters would be done by pasting on the designated areas where registrations were carried out. .
However, according to Dr Ishmael Igbani, INEC�s commissioner, political parties monitoring, who spoke with Vanguard � our preparations for the election is on course , nothing will stop the elections. It will go on as planned. You can see that we are tightening up our preparations and we are set to give Nigerians an election they will all be proud of .�
�And every Nigerian must support this sincere effort, if INEC fails Nigeria have failed for that reason we must all ensure that process is sustained to succeed not withstanding the many challenging we are facing� he added
Asked whether the various court cases against the Commission and the death of the AD Presidential candidate will undermine the process, he stated that �we have done our home work and we are very prepared for a very worst situation , but we are determined to ensure that election holds “.
It would be recalled that a more ominous sign emerged last week concerning the forthcoming polls with regard to whether or not they will ever hold. The National Democratic Party (NDP), one of the parties participating in this year�s general election, was before the court with a motion it filed through its lawyers, praying the court to stop the conduct of the elections in what political observers say is akin to the brewing of the kind of doom that befell the 1993 polls.
The NDP, according to its motion argued that the election should not hold because the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has been unable to produce the final list of registered voters and display it for voters, political parties and the general public. This, according to the party, should raise objections as allowed by the provisions of the 2006 Electoral Act.
Part of the argument of the party is that as at the deadline of voters�s registration in December when the Electoral Act actually recognized, only 10 million voters had been registered and not 61 million voters which INEC said it registered when the law did not allow it in February.