WHY WE FAILED IN ANAMBRA - PROF. JEGA

The Chairman, Independent National Electoral
Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, has explained
why the governorship election was rescheduled in
65 units in Obosi, Idemili North Local Government
Area.
He said an electoral officer in charge of the area
sabotaged INEC's preparations by allegedly
withholding materials rather than distributing them.
Besides, he said the result sheets, which differ
according to units, were jumbled up.
The commission had to take time to rectify the mix
up, which resulted in the delays experienced, he
said.
Jega said he suspected that the officer was induced
by someone who wanted to subvert the process,
adding that the alleged culprit has been handed
over to the police for prosecution.
The INEC, chairman, who spoke on AIT during a
programme on the election, which was monitored in
Awka, said every effort would be made to get to the
root of the alleged sabotage.
He said: "We made all the preparations and
decentralised the process of distribution of
materials in order to ensure that they get to the
polling units in time for the commencement of the
election. That was before Saturday.
"Unfortunately and regrettably – we are humans.
We can do all the preparations, but if people are
determined to subvert the process, one way or the
other they will subvert it.
"So, they used our staff. I think we should be very
careful when we have a staff of about 12,000 in
INEC, when one person has committed an offence
and then you use it to generalise or condemn
everybody in INEC.
"Our Electoral Officer in charge of Idemili North
Local Government, for inexplicable reasons,
messed up the distribution of ballot box papers and
result sheets. That was the cause of the delay in
the distribution of materials in Idemili.
"All materials were to have been distributed by
Friday evening, but for some odd reasons, they
made sure that they held onto some of the result
sheets, and they also gave wrong result sheets to
different polling units.
"For Anambra election, as we did in Edo and Ondo,
every polling unit has a unique result sheet. So,
you cannot take one result sheet to a different
place, because it will not work.
"I assured the stakeholders when we met in Awka
that materials must get to the polling units before
commencement of election.
"So, when we discovered at about 1am that there
was this mix-up, and we tried to reach the Electoral
Officer and the supervisor and there was confusion,
and we knew something was fishy, we said there
would be no deployment until we sorted out the
problem.
"As I speak, we have handed over the Electoral
Officer to the police because clearly what he did is
a sabotage of the electoral process, including the
Local Government supervisor.
"It took us until about 1pm to be able to sort out
what they had jumbled up. We communicated with
the community as at 1pm that we were ready to
distribute to all the other wards, and materials were
distributed."
Jega said INEC officials consulted with the
community before rescheduling the election, which
the All Progressives Congress (APC) rejected.