- The chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmud Yakubu, says 205 officials have been suspended
- Mahmud promises to ensure that the 2019 election is better in conduct than that of 2015
- He reveals that very sound people have been picked from the academia for this purpose
The chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmud Yakubu, says the organisation has suspended 205 of its officials over various unwholesome roles in the 2015 general elections.
The Nation reports that Mahmud revealed this at a national colloquium organised by the Independent Service Delivery Monitoring Group (ISDMG) in Abuja, adding that interdiction, recommended by INEC’s Appointments, Promotion and Discipline Committee (APDC), was the highest so far.
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The INEC boss noted that constructive criticisms from the public had helped the commission to get better in delivering its mandate vis-a-vis conducting credible elections.
According to Mahmud, the commission had conducted elections in 179 constituencies so far with only five challenged in court. He argued that this attests to the credibility of the elections.
He further revealed that INEC had received over 100 additional applications for new political parties, while nine had met the criteria just as he assured that the 2019 elections would be better than that of 2015.
Mahmud further said this determination to make the outcomes of elections credible was why INEC engaged tested and trusted members of the academic community as collation officers.
“On how what we are doing to prevent the connivance of collation officers in rigging of results, we still believe that the university community is still apolitical and we can rely on them largely for the job at hand.
“It is for that reason that the commission has always worked with ASUU to recruit credible persons for us.
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“We have now changed the strategy of recruitment as we now move outside the immediate environment where an election is taking place to recruit collation officers.
“And to endure minimal contact with them, you will see that we no longer publish names of the collation officers as we used to do in the past,” he said.
NAIJ.com earlier reported that the Independent National Electoral Commission recently said it had discovered 299 names of aliens in its voter register.
Professor Mahmood Yakubu, made this known at a consultative meeting of the commission with security agencies in Abuja, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.
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Source: Naija.ng