Election: March 28 is sacrosanct, Jega assures Nigerians

Chairman of Inde­pendent National Electoral Com­mission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, has told some Nigerians clamouring for the postponement of the next week’s genral elections that the date is sacrosanct, ruling out any possibility of further postponement.

Delivering a keynote ad­dress at an interactive session with the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room – a coalition of over 60 civil society organ­isations – in Abuja yesterday, Prof. Jega maintained that since the commission had achieved 90 per cent distribu­tion and collection of perma­nent voters’ cards (PVCs) in 11 states so far, there was no  reason for any postponement.

While reassuring that the commission had put to good use, the six-week extension window of the polls, he not­ed: “We are now adequately prepared for the elections, which have been resched­uled to March 28 and April 11. I want to say that I have not seen any indication from anywhere that there is a de­sire for another postponement of this election. So, we are all focused on March 28 and April 11.

“Soon after we announced the rescheduling of the elec­tions, the commission met and decided on how best to utilise this period of exten­sion for six weeks. We de­cided that the first thing to do was to do a field assessment. We have successfully done all of that.