Barely three days after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) postponed the general elections to March 28 and April 11, respectively, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has expressed doubt over the commission’s readiness to conduct the polls. Recall that the INEC chairman, Attahiru Jega, had on Saturday announced a shift in the 2015 general elections earlier scheduled for February 14 and 28, respectively.
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Announcing the commission’s decision, Jega said the elections had to be postponed after the nation’s security agencies told INEC that they were commencing a six-week special operation against Boko Haram insurgents in the North East and would not be available to support the elections. This decision by the security forces, he said, rendered INEC’s readiness and insistence to go ahead with the elections a risky venture. But speaking in Abuja on Tuesday, the director- general, Jonathan/Sambo Presidential Campaign Organisation, Amadu Ali, said problems of the commission were grave, stressing that it will fail monumentally.
Querying the commission for some aberration in the distribution of PVCs, Ali, a former PDP national chairman, argued that the shift in election date was meant to save INEC from “monumental embarrassment”. He berated the commission over the lopsidedness in the distribution of the PVCs, wondering why Borno State, one of the North East states ravaged by war had collected more PVCs than Lagos. With this development, Ali said that INEC might have allowed its distribution of cards to be tampered with. Apart from the issue of PVCs, the DG noted that card readers were not fully distributed and tested, pointing out that voters have not even seen the equipment.
