Professor Attahiru Jega, yesterday said that the August 9, gubernatorial election in Osun State would be conducted under tight security.
Jega who made the disclosure yesterday in Abuja at a workshop for media executives said that the commission’s interest was to secure the electoral process in Osun State, protect INEC personnel and material and make the environment for the election peaceful for people to come out and vote.
He dismissed as misconception the position by some politicians that the just held Ekiti governorship election was militarised even as he explained why some voters in Ekiti did not find their names in the voters’ register.
He also reacted on various controversial issues about the conduct of election in some states of the federation in recent past and the preparation for the Osun State governorship election.
On the alleged militarisation of the Ekiti election, Jega said: “I am a student of Political Science. I have done a number of papers on militarisation. So, I know the meaning of militarisation. There is no way anybody can define what happened in Ekiti as militarisation.
“But there was heavy security presence. All we can say is that there should be no overbearing presence of security operatives, particularly soldiers.
“Again, we can’t dictate on the number of security officials that should be deployed,” he said, adding that there was no reason to condemn what happened in Ekiti as against the global best practice.
“This is because every country has its own context. We know security has its own challenge in Nigeria. Security deployment is a function of variables. All I want is for the security agencies to do everything to secure the electoral process in Osun,” he said.
On the missing names of voters from the voters’ register, Jega explained that those who were victims might have been involved in multiple registrations.
He said: “Let me say this: involvement in multiple registrations is an offence. When you do, our database makes it easy for us to detect because we can see your photographs, your fingerprints and the time you do all the registrations notwithstanding whether you wear different clothes or cap or head gear.
“If you do multiple registrations, we retain only one and remove others from the system. The problem now is that a person who did multiple registrations will not know which was removed and which was retained. So, when such person gets to the polling booth, waiving his voter’s card and cannot find his name, he begins to complain that he did register, but that he could not find his name in the voter’s register,” he said.
Jega, yesterday, also confirmed that there would be election in all the states under emergency rule.
The commission boss said that contrary to media reports that election would not be conducted in such states, he said election would hold in all states where the tenure of office of sitting governors has expired. (Source: Nat'l Mirror)
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