By Oriade Ayomide
Arguably the most anticipated election in Nigeria’s history, the 2015 General elections has been a subject of most political discussions since 2011. In preparation of this epochal brand of election, Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega has said that the commission will soon release the timetable and sequence of the elections.
While receiving the European Union Managing Director for Africa, Nicholas Wescott at the commission’s headquarters in Abujaon Wednesday, Prof. Jega said it would not be ideal for the commission to hold elections where there were security challenges, and thereby expressed optimism that the security challenges being faced, especially in the country’s North East, would be addressed and overcome before the 2015 general elections.
According to the chairman, the upcoming governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun states as well as the 2015 general elections would be preceded by Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise, stressing that INEC will at the elections no longer use addendum but electronic register.
This, he said, followed the significant improvements on the electronic register, which coupled with a court ruling tasking the commission to the use of one register to conduct elections.
Towards this, professor Jega urged Nigerians who had not registered or whose names were not in the electronic register to use the opportunity of the impending CVR exercise to have their particulars/biometrics captured in the electronic register.
He added that INEC would in February launch a facility to enable registrants to query the commission’s database so as to ascertain whether names have been on the electronic register or otherwise.
