Elections may not hold in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe – Jega

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, may have soft pedaled on its insistence that elections will hold in the troubled states of the Northeast despite sustained state of insecurity in the region, as the Commission's Chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega has expressed fear that elections may eventually not hold in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states if the attacks on Permanent Voter Card (PVCs) centres are sustained by the insurgents.

This fear was expressed yesterday by Prof. Jega at a forum organized by the African Policy Research Institute at Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja.

The INEC boss stated that unless there is a significant improvement in the security situation in the North-East, the general elections may not hold in the area.
Prof. Jega said: "A place like Borno State that is being ravaged by insurgents, and unless something drastically is being done to the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) there to return, the state governorship may be difficult, if not impossible under the circumstances.

"To be realistic, we must say that it may be impossible to conduct elections everywhere, in every local government, in every constituency in those three insurgency affected states", he said.

He said INEC is working hard to limit the number of Nigerians that will be disenfranchised due to the attacks by insurgents.
According to Jega, the electoral body has made alternative plans for Internally Displaced Persons to vote designated places.

"As a result of the so many IDPs, our emphasis is going to be on the North-eastern states where we would pay adequate attention to the displaced Nigerians there," he said.

The Chief Press Secretary to the INEC boss, Mr. Kayode Idowu, in an earlier interview on a national television monitored in Abuja, reaffirmed that the Commission had always expressed its readiness to conduct elections in all states of the federation, including the three troubled states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe.

Idowu however said the Commission was optimistic that the security challenges in the three states would be appropriately handled by the security forces for elections to hold there.

He said: "The commission's position has always been that the security of every staff to be deployed, either adhoc or permanent, has to be guaranteed by the security agencies and that is why the commission has always said that it will work in close collaboration with the security agencies to make sure that for it to deploy its staff to these areas, the security agencies will have to be on top of the game."