By Favour Goodness
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it is ready to conduct a near-perfect governorship election in Anambra come Nov. 6.
Loading ...Prof. Yakubu Mahmood, Chairman of INEC, said this at a Workshop For Journalists on Election Processes and Procedures in Awka on Thursday.
He said the entire process from registration to transmission of results would be fully automated including the use of bimodal which took care of unimodal identification processes which only verified voters by fingerprints.
The chairman said there were a total of 2,525,471 registered voters in the state after an additional 77,471 generated during the just concluded Continuous Voter Registration exercise.
He urged journalists to help the Commission disseminate the right information as they were crucial to the success of the election process, noting that sending the wrong information could inflame the society.
On his part, Mr Chukwuemeka Nnaji, Head of Department, ICT, INEC Awka Office said the Commission improved on its system using indigenous team of engineers.
Nnaji said the process was such that human interference was greatly reduced and that data uploaded online would be highly secured from cyber attacks and hackers.
He said the prospective voter would be identified by various fractures including their faces and that nobody would be able to vote twice as the registration had been cleaned up.
According to him, the Commission’s desire of having credible elections is sacrosanct, technology deployment has proven to be an effective tool in achieving the set objectives.
“The need to have one-person-one-vote is what has necessitated the deployment of a Bimodal Voter Authentication System (BVAS);
“The need to ensure the credibility and openness of the Commission has necessitated the deployment of the IReV Portal, so we ask for the cooperation of all to enable the Commission meet its set objectives,” he said.
In his opening remark, Dr Nkwachukwu Orji, Resident Electoral Commissioner in Anambra said the workshop was to update journalists with progress made ahead of the election.
Orji, who was represented by Mr Samuel Nimem, Head of Voter Education and Publicity in Awka, urged the media to report facts and not engage in interpreting what they did not understand.
He said the Commission was available to journalists who wished to get clarifications while urging them to endeavour to get accreditation for coverage of the election proper.
