INEC Fires 205 for 2015 Election Fraud

INEC Fires 205 for 2015 Election Fraud

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has suspended 205 officials over shoddy practices in the 2015 general elections.

This was disclosed Tuesday by INEC Chairman Prof. Mahmud Yakubu during his keynote address at a national colloquium organised by the Independent Service Delivery Monitoring Group (ISDMG) in Abuja.

Mahmud said constructive criticisms from the public had helped the commission to get better in delivering its mandate of conducting credible elections, TheNation writes.

Giving assurance that the 2019 elections would be better than that of 2015, he said the commission had conducted elections in 179 constituencies so far, adding that only five had been challenged in court, which attested to the credibility of the elections.

According to him, the determination to make outcomes of elections credible informed the engagement of tested and trusted members of the academic community as collation officers.

Revealing that an additional seven million Nigerians have registered through the window provided by the Continuous Voters Registration Programme, he reiterated the electoral body’s stand that there was no legal encumbrance stopping the commission from proceeding with the sequence of election as entrenched in the existing electoral law.

On the seven million additional voters, the INEC chairman noted that Rivers State tops the list of states with the highest registered voters followed by Anambra, Borno and Delta. Others include Lagos, Cross River, Osun, Enugu, Kano and Plateau.

He said the commission is in talks with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to help in liaising with telecoms service providers to assist in sending bulk messages to millions of voters who are yet to collect their Permanent Voter Cards, which are still in the offices of the electoral body.